According to Ong, "Words are never fully determined in their abstract significance but have meaning only with relation to man's body and its interaction with surrounding" (10). In other words, words have no meaning in isolation, but derive meaning when used in a certain context or through a particular medium; whether spoken or written."The spoken word is part of the present actuality and has meaning established by the total situation in which it comes to being" (10). The spoken word and the written word have or may imply different meanings because of the different settings in which they may be said or written. For example, a speech given by Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s would yield different significance if it were to be given today. Subsequently, if those very words were to be printed, they would also yield different meanings, because of the audience/ readership and the circumstances.
The distinction between the spoken and written word paves the way for the distinction between the audience and the readership. Ong believed that an orator has an audience, which he referred to a 'true audience', because it is present and it is interactive. "Acting here and now on one another and on the speaker as members of an audience do" (11) He further explained that they are a collective unit that hears what the speaker is saying, how he says it and the tone in which it is said. The writer on the other hand, has readers, which is plural. Therefore, the writer would have to write to each reader individually, as opposed to a speaker speaking to an audience as a single unit. This makes the job of the writer more complicated than it has to be, this is why writers fictionalize their readers. "Readership is an abstraction in a way that audience is not" (11). Thereby, readership is fictionalized by the writer so that he doesn't have to think of his audience as different individuals in different settings but instead "construct in his imagination, clearly or vaguely an audience cast in some sort of role" (12).
Not only is the reader expected to play the cast onto him by the writer, but the reader is also expected to "construct in his imagination what he believes the writer means"(12). This may be one of the most difficult things to do considering that the role he plays may "coincides with the role in the rest of his actual life" (12). The reader therefore, has to conform to the imagination of the writer.
Ong's position on the reader, clashes with Barthes'. Ong expects the the reader to be the slave of the writer. Barthes on the other hand believed that the reader should disentangle the meaning of the text in the way he, the reader, believes it is to be disentangled. Though both parties clashed on the topic of the reader, they also had one similarity. Both Barthes and Ong, in their own way believed that the author is the inventor of the reader. Barthes expressed through his metaphor of life and death, that for the reader to thrive, the author must die "the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author" (877). Ong on the other hand, stated that the reader is created through the writer's imagination.
Both parties share the idea that the reader is created by the author. The means by which they are created may be different but they hold the same notion.
-Kelli
The distinction between the spoken and written word paves the way for the distinction between the audience and the readership. Ong believed that an orator has an audience, which he referred to a 'true audience', because it is present and it is interactive. "Acting here and now on one another and on the speaker as members of an audience do" (11) He further explained that they are a collective unit that hears what the speaker is saying, how he says it and the tone in which it is said. The writer on the other hand, has readers, which is plural. Therefore, the writer would have to write to each reader individually, as opposed to a speaker speaking to an audience as a single unit. This makes the job of the writer more complicated than it has to be, this is why writers fictionalize their readers. "Readership is an abstraction in a way that audience is not" (11). Thereby, readership is fictionalized by the writer so that he doesn't have to think of his audience as different individuals in different settings but instead "construct in his imagination, clearly or vaguely an audience cast in some sort of role" (12).
Not only is the reader expected to play the cast onto him by the writer, but the reader is also expected to "construct in his imagination what he believes the writer means"(12). This may be one of the most difficult things to do considering that the role he plays may "coincides with the role in the rest of his actual life" (12). The reader therefore, has to conform to the imagination of the writer.
Ong's position on the reader, clashes with Barthes'. Ong expects the the reader to be the slave of the writer. Barthes on the other hand believed that the reader should disentangle the meaning of the text in the way he, the reader, believes it is to be disentangled. Though both parties clashed on the topic of the reader, they also had one similarity. Both Barthes and Ong, in their own way believed that the author is the inventor of the reader. Barthes expressed through his metaphor of life and death, that for the reader to thrive, the author must die "the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author" (877). Ong on the other hand, stated that the reader is created through the writer's imagination.
Both parties share the idea that the reader is created by the author. The means by which they are created may be different but they hold the same notion.
-Kelli
Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends,
Third Edition. Ed. David H. Richter. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2007. 868, 874-877.
Ong, Walter J. “The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction.” PMLA 90 (1975): 9-21.
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