Language as Hermeneutic: A Primer on the Phrase and Digitization

Language in all its modes―oral, written, print, digital―claims the central position in Walter J. Ong’s acclaimed speculations on human tradition. After his loss of life, his archives had been discovered to comprise unpublished drafts of a last ebook manuscript that Ong envisioned as a distillation of his life’s work. This primary publication of Language as Hermeneutic, reconstructed from Ong’s numerous drafts by Thomas D. Zlatic and Sara van den Berg, is greater than a summation of his considering. It develops new arguments round problems with cognition, interpretation, and language. Digitization, he writes, is inherent in all types of “writing,” from its early beginnings in clay tablets. As digitization will increase in print and now digital tradition, there’s a corresponding must counter the fractioning of digitization with the unitive makes an attempt of hermeneutics, significantly hermeneutics which can be modeled on oral slightly than written paradigms.

Along with the edited textual content of Language as Hermeneutic, this quantity consists of essays on the reconstruction of Ong’s work and its significance inside Ong’s mental venture, in addition to a beforehand unpublished article by Ong, “Time, Digitization, and Dalí’s Reminiscence,” which additional explores language’s position in preserving and enhancing our humanity within the digital age.