Language as Hermeneutic: A Primer on the Word and Digitization

by Walter J. Ong, Thomas D. Zlatic (Editor), Sara Van Den Berg (Editor)

Language in all its modes--oral, written, print, electronic--claims the central role in Walter J. Ong's acclaimed speculations on human culture. After his death, his archives were found to contain unpublished drafts of a final book manuscript that Ong envisioned as a distillation of his life's work. This first publication of Language as Hermeneutic, reconstructed from Ong's various drafts by Thomas D. Zlatic and Sara van den Berg, is more than a summation of his thinking. It develops new arguments around issues of cognition, interpretation, and language. Digitization, he writes, is inherent in all forms of "writing," from its early beginnings in clay tablets. As digitization increases in print and now electronic culture, there is a corresponding need to counter the fractioning of digitization with the unitive attempts of hermeneutics, particularly hermeneutics that are modeled on oral rather than written paradigms.

In addition to the edited text of Language as Hermeneutic, this volume includes essays on the reconstruction of Ong's work and its significance within Ong's intellectual project, as well as a previously unpublished article by Ong, "Time, Digitization, and Dal-'s Memory," which further explores language's role in preserving and enhancing our humanity in the digital age.

Genres: Linguistics

238 pages, Hardcover

Published January 15, 2018

Reviews

[Fred Cheyunski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ong’s Interpretation - Having read "The Present State of Scholarship in the History of Rhetoric: A Twenty-First Century Guide" with a Forward by Ong included from a previous edition, I saw this “new” title while looking for similar material on the classic trivium element of grammar. While there does not appear to be the kind of work I was seeking, I was glad to find this book by Ong that did address my interest in a number of respects (more about that later).

Since, Professor Farrell’s has done a review (on Amazon) that is so complete with Ong’s background and different aspects of the book, my focus will be more on highlights and the relevance of the book to some like myself who have been immersed in digitization of information technology. (For full disclosure, I was fortunate to meet Ong and have several discussions with him on related topics when on a consulting assignment in St. Louis around 2000 during the latter part of his life, so I can attest to his fascination with these matters).

As a quick overview, the book proceeds in the following way. After an Introduction by Sara van den Berg, there is Part I which is the text of Ong’s manuscript with its 12 chapters assembled by editors from 4 versions from around the early 1990’s. Part II consists of two pieces by Thomas Zlatic: one about the evolution of the 4 versions and their assembly into the present book; the second about the work and Ong’s reasons for its preparation and abandonment. Part III consists of an article by Ong relating Salvador Dali’s “Persistence of Memory” to digitization and time, while the final piece by Zlatic provides his comments and reflection on the previous article and the book as a whole. Also included are significant bibliographies, notes, and an index.

As Ong states in his Prologue (pg. 12) “Hermeneutics is the Greek-based English word corresponding pretty closely to the Latin-based English word interpretation. Both words refer to explanation. But ‘hermeneutics’ . . .usually refers to intensive, scholarly, more or less systematized . . . interpretation. . . since the Enlightenment, hermeneutics . . . learned, . . . and systematic explanation made its way into Western thought as referring to the interpretation of biblical texts. But today it is growing beyond all bounds, enveloping innumerable subjects . . . “

There are many gems from Ong and the editors in this book. For example, consider Ong’s comments on deriving the meaning of the US Constitution (pg. 44) or Zlatic’s tidbits about Ong’s patterning the book after Havelock’s “The Muse Learns to Write” (pg. 148) or the scholar’s concern with decision making (p. 176). Given my pursuits, my favorite parts were Ong’s Chapter 9 “Logos and Digitization” and Chapter 12 “Epilogue: The Mythology of Logos” where Ong discusses these terms as they have evolved. Here he treats the “ancient quarrel” of the trivium (dialectic or logic, grammar and rhetoric), the quest for dominance among them and need for both the ‘logos’ of digitization and mythos (of grammar and rhetoric) necessary for the in-depth exegesis or interpretation we seek today. For me, Ong’s comments here help tie together work along these lines spanning his career (for example see my review of "An Ong Reader: Challanges for Further Inquiry (Hampton Press Communication Series Media Ecology)").

There are many repetitions and loose ends as would be expected of such a book, but there is still much value to be mined. Zlatic discusses Ong’s own dissatisfaction with the work, yet his clarity and prescience at times amazes.

As van den Berg ably puts it in her Introduction, “Although Walter Ong wrote before the advent of big data, his work offers an important alternative to its dominance . . . The compilation of big data makes possible new kinds of interpretation and research on a vast scale . . . [Ong] called for . . . a new language of interpretation to meet that need. . . the human interpreter continues to be crucial . . . Ong valued [digital] technology, but regarded hermeneutic as its necessary complement . . . He calls for balance and interaction of hermeneutic and digitization . . . “ (see my reviews of "Graph Databases: New Opportunities for Connected Data" and "Lingua Fracta: Toward a Rhetoric of New Media (New Dimensions in Computers and Composition)").

Finally, as Ong indicates, “For practical purposes, persons can and do bring explanation to an end and arrive at a truth adequate for the current situation, but there always remains more to be asked and responded to if one wanted.” These remarks certainly hold true for this volume which nevertheless is an important contribution to scholarship and toward the kind of wisdom that will help move us forward.

[path · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is a collection of manuscripts that thematically hang together around the idea that computers increase the digitization of ideas and experience but it is the human capacity for interpretation that is required to make sense out of it. Even so, chapters read like fragments of arguments; some fit together like pieces in a puzzle, some don't even if they appear to be on the same topic. Ultimately, there are some good ideas in here about hermeneutics and the nature of digitization but the reader is left to their own devices stitching some of those ideas together.