Grapholects

Today I randomly chose a page in Ong to explicate for my paper. There's just too much to be able to decide on my own, so I let Fortuna decide. I put my finger on page 104 and I'm very happy with it. I was telling Dr. Sexson a few days ago that with the internet it is impossible to get a good deal or haggle with anyone because people know too much. Back in the day (a day I wasn't there for, but my dad tells me about it) you could get a deal because people didn't know as much. My dad says, "Some people know the price of everything and the value of nothing". So continuing with this idea, Ong talks about how huge the modern grapholect is. Like Nietzche says, were all walking dictionaries with magna-vocabularies, and, as such, according to Jack Goody, this leads to an overwhelming sense or alienation because we can pick and choose what we want to know. In an oral culture it was all right there. Everybody knew what everyone else knew, there was no superfluous material or esoteric material. But it was also aggregative, and in today's literate world, some people know some things while other people know different things. Ong even mentions that the modern day giant sized grapholect has led to the rise of "grammar Nazis" because where grapholects exist, "correct grammar and usage are popularly interpreted as the grammar and usage of the grapholect itself to the exclusion of the grammar and usage of other dialects. So...that's what I'll write my paper on. I'd love to write it about electricity, but maybe I'll save that for my Ph.D dissertation.