Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture

Drawing on a wide range of disciplines-linguistics, phenomenological analysis, cultural anthropology, media studies, and intellectual history-Walter J. Ong offers a reasoned and sophisticated view of human consciousness different in many respects from that of structuralism. The essays in Interfaces of the Word are grouped around the dialectically related themes of change or alienation and growth or integration. Among the subjects Ong covers are the origins of speech in mother tongues; the r...