Oral Translation to the Digital Frontier

We cannot escape human contact by hiding behind separate screens and keyboards, communicating via messages, emails, and status updates, as anchored in social media usage. Despite the fact that we’re hidden, true verbal communication and oral culture is not totally lost. As Walter Ong put it in the introduction of his book Orality and Literacy, “Our understanding of the differences between orality and literacy developed only in the electronic age, not earlier.” Social networks and the activity that occurs on them is an extension of orality, though many could argue that status updates and tweets are literary due to their written form. However, the digital age is an age of ‘secondary orality’, a resurgence of orality if you will. The orality of telephones, television, and the Internet depend on writing and print for their existences and content (Ong, Orality and Literacy 2). Additionally, the activity and communication that occurs on social networking websites displays multiple of Ong’s characteristics of orality. On Twitter, specifically, from the instantaneous replies to tweets and speaking agonistically, sans a verbal filter to redundant and repetitive hashtag usage and malicious subtweeting, Twitter has become a battleground of new-age orality.

A more recent Twitter beef occurred between Hollywood burnout, Amanda Bynes, and R&B singer/songwriter Rihanna (Figure 1). Essentially, Bynes tweeted “at” Rihanna calling her ugly. She continued to justify that statement by saying, “@rihanna Chris Brown beat you

because you’re not pretty enough”. The squabble did not end there. Rihanna “subtweeted”, “Ya see what happens when they cancel Intervention?” Bynes instantaneously replied to that, repeating, in no uncertain terms, how she ...

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...creators of Twitter to combat the adversities of cyberbullying on Twitter?

Will steps be taken to protect users similar to what the creators of Facebook have done? If so, how will these revisions affect the way people are using Twitter now [as somewhat of a personal journal]?

References

"Cyberbullying Statistics." Bullying Statistics. Cyberbullying Research Center, n.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2014.

"Homo Sapiens." Homo Sapiens. Smithsonian Institute, n.d. Web. 18 Feb. 2014.

Ong, Walter Jackson. Introduction. Orality and Literacy. London: Routledge, 2002. 2. Print.

Ong, Walter J. 2002. Interfaces of the World: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977. 188-212. Print.

"STOP Cyberbullying: What Is Cyberbullying, Exactly?" STOP Cyberbullying: What Is Cyberbullying, Exactly? Wired Safety, n.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2014.