Ong's argument

From the beginning of Ong’s writing, his overall argument is literacy is imperious. He explains literacy’s characters in the domain of high –technology cultures, “This is particularly true in high-technology cultures” and “Moreover, in high-technology cultures-which, more and more, are setting the style for cultures across the world since literacy is regarded as so unquestionably normative and normal”. Through literacy, he makes a transition to writing itself analysis of “Without writing, the literate mind would not and could not think as it does, not only when engaged in writing but even when it is composing its thoughts in oral form”. When it comes to the quote “Functionally literate persons, those who regularly assimilate discourse such as this, are not simply thinking and speaking human beings”, the word, nevertheless, is an example of the literate person, to explain the idea that it is so fixed that the written word taken possession of our consciousness. The oral word, in his view, plays a distressed role because it does not fit the literacy well, in his word, “literates want words and thoughts pinned down”. At last, he makes a conclusion that spoken languages are all amenable to conversion into writing and it is uninformed to say that language is writing.

Jiahong Guan wrote: From the beginning of Ong’s writing, his overall argument is literacy is imperious. He explains literacy’s characters in the domain of high –technology cultures, “This is particularly true in high-technology cultures” and “Moreover, in high-technology cultures-which, more and more, are setting the style for cultures across the world since literacy is regarded as so unquestionably normative and normal”. Through literacy, he makes a transition to writing itself analysis of “Without writing, the literate mind would not and could not think as it does, not only when engaged in writing but even when it is composing its thoughts in oral form”. When it comes to the quote “Functionally literate persons, those who regularly assimilate discourse such as this, are not simply thinking and speaking human beings”, the word, nevertheless, is an example of the literate person, to explain the idea that it is so fixed that the written word taken possession of our consciousness. The oral word, in his view, plays a distressed role because it does not fit the literacy well, in his word, “literates want words and thoughts pinned down”. At last, he makes a conclusion that spoken languages are all amenable to conversion into writing and it is uninformed to say that language is writing.

This is really good summary! I think you contain some important things about ong's argumentation.

I think there is one thing that we understand little bit differently between you and me about the oral word.
From the Ong's, I thought that he also emphasized the importance of oral words. It was just pointing out that writing is more important than the oral in Literacy.

But you said "the oral word, in his view, plays a distressed role because it does not fit the literacy."

Um.... we might need to discuss about it!