Module 1 Activity 1

Orality has existed way before literacy. Back in the days our ancestors ways to communicate were through sounds, facial expressions and gestures. A growl counted as a word and a stomp meant something, our generation would never understand them but they had their own ways of understanding each other.After some time literacy was born to make communication easier. People started to develop writing systems and started reading. Back in the days only small amounts of people knew how to read and write but as time went by the number started growing and now the global literacy rate is quite high.Primary oral culture‘s thoughts and expressions tends to be additive, redundant, conservative, close to human lifeworld, agonistically toned, empathetic, homeostatic and situational unlike literacy that is subordinate, objectively distance and abstract. One notable difference between the two is the way information is stored. In primary oral culture people would say things repeatedly to preserve the information on their minds. In literary culture however information can be easily stored through writing.Although the two has quite some differences it is important to note that they are closely related for literary culture was born out of primary oral culture, also both have the same purpose and means, to communicate and transmit information from one person to another.Walter Ong said that communication is intersubjective because the sender needs a receiver in order to initiate communication because whatever the sender says depends on the possible responses the sender anticipates from the receiver. Communication is a two way process where there is an exchange of thoughts between the sender and receiver. They can listen to each other’s ideas, expect feedback and agree on a certain topic. Communication from media however is not intersubjective for there aren’t any personal interactions and no reactions or feedbacks are expected by the sender.Media model of communication is one sided like writing for the sender doesn’t need any response from the receiver and there is no exchange of information. That is how media model of communication show chirographic conditioning.

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