Barthes and Ong Debate: The Role of the Reader

Ong and Barthes aim to define the role of the prospective reader. By using these two works in together, we may be able to understand how readers are able to take on a variety of roles.

Ong suggests the Author of the “text” fictionalizes the prospective audience explains how the Author is able to maintain an active role. He premises his argument on the idea that rhetoric has slowly evolved from primarily oratory to written speech. Therefore, the shifting in becoming a reader doesn’t assume the same collectivity as being an audience member (Ong 10). He believes that this type of transition has contributed to the idea of “each new role that readers are made to assume is related to previous roles” (Ong 12). He argues that reader’s role “evolve without any explicit rules or directives “ by using Hemingway’s style as an example. 

In Barthes' essay, he strongly supports the idea of “birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author” (Barthes 877). Throughout his essay he argues that the Author nourishes the book in the “here and now,” before the “text” becomes interpreted by the reader. Additionally, Barthes believes that the Author’s experience composing the “text” remains separate from those of the reader. He refuses to “assign a secret ultimate meaning to a text,” by allowing the readers to “disentangle” the text based on their interpretations. (Barthes 877). He places the responsibility on the reader “who holds together in a single field all the traces by which a written text is constituted” (Barthes 877).

Ong explains the role of readers by using examples of writers with a distinct writing style that incorporates readers within the “text.” For example, Ong uses Hemingway to show how implementing the “Hemingway relationship: you-and- me” assigns a particular role to readers (Ong 13). Based on this style, a reader forms a “companionship” with the “text” as they are indirectly in second person narration how to feel and act. Additionally Ong uses Chaucer’s literary style to show how “he tells his readers how they are to fictionalize themselves” (Ong 16). Essentially, he argues that the role of the reader is to formulate an interpretation given the scope the Author will provide. Readers are invited to interact with the “text,” but are manipulated to view the text in a particular manner.

Barthes believes the Author utilizes language to prove that “[it] knows a subject not a person” (Barthes 876). Therefore, we can conclude that Barthes rhetorical choice to not include the author shows how readers affiliate themselves with subjects more readily than people. This further validates his theory that readers will form their own relationships with the “text”-- ones separate from the influences of the Author. Unlike Ong’s opinion about the reader’s role, Barthes concludes that the reader is the reason why the text is able to have unity. The reader may not be directly included in the “text,” but according to Barthes they ensure that the text is properly protected and transmitted (Barthes 877).

Barthes and Ong form two different views on the roles of the readers. Barthes encourages readers to form their own opinion of the “text,” whereas Ong allows readers to do the same except with the limitations placed by the Author. These two viewpoints help us to understand that the readers may take on various roles--both passive and active--depending on how the written text.

-Erin Schwartz