CONCEPT
Secondary Orality
Ong's term for the oral-like dynamics of electronic media—communal, participatory, present-tense—presupposing literacy rather than preceding it.
Secondary orality is orality that knows about writing. Coined by Ong to describe radio, television, and later digital media, the concept captures a paradox: electronic technologies restore the communal, participatory, real-time dynamics of oral culture, but they do so within a framework shaped by five centuries of print literacy. The radio listener participates in something that feels like oral communication—a human voice, unfolding in time, engaging a dispersed but simultaneous audience. But the broadcast is scripted, produced, edited, scheduled—subjected to literate planning before being delivered in an oral medium. Secondary orality is self-conscious where primary orality was unselfconscious, technologically mediated where primary orality was direct, and grounded in literate institutions where primary orality was grounded in face-to-face community. The concept explains why electronic media feel simultaneously ancient and modern—retrieving oral dynamics while operating through literate logic.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Ong developed the concept in the 1960s and 1970s, observing that television and radio were producing a culture that looked, behaviorally, like oral culture—emphasis on community, participation, present-tense engagement—while remaining structurally dependent on