Walter Ong
Walter Ong was born on November 30, 1912 in Kansas City, Missouri.
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College and Career
Ong studied at many colleges and universities. He received his undergraduate degree from Rockhurst University, which was then known as Rockhurst College. Ong then went on to Saint Louis University where he attained a Master's degree in English and followed that with a doctorate in English from Harvard University. He was a professor of English Literature and published over 450 scholarly articles. He also served as President of the Modern Language Association. He died August 12, 2003. Ong was also a Jesuit Priest.
Orality and Literacy
Ong's text, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word was originally published in 1982. In it, Ong focused primarily on how language develops from thought, becomes speech, and finally progresses to the written word. It has been translated into eleven other languages, and has become known as his most popular work.
"With their attention directed to texts, scholars often went on to assume, often without reflection, that oral verbalization was essentially the same as the written verbalization they normally dealt with, and that the oral art forms were to all intents and purposes simply texts, except for the fact that they were not written down. The impression grew that, apart from the oration (governed by written rhetorical rules), oral art forms were essentially unskillful and not worth serious study." - Orality and Literacy
Books
Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (2002) has been translated into 11 languages.
An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry. Ed. Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup. (2002).
Faith and Contexts, 4 vols. Ed. Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup. (1992-1999).
Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology (1971).
Interfaces of the Word (1977).
Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (1958).
Ramus and Talon Inventory (1958).
The Barbarian Within (1962).
In the Human Grain (1967).
Frontiers in American Catholicism (1957).
American Catholic Crossroads (1959).
