Reading Blog 8

October 6, 2011
Proust and the Squid

I really enjoyed reading this article, it was very interesting and kept my attention throughout the entire piece.  The notion that reading is not natural is an unreal idea.  It is somewhat odd to think of reading as an invention, it seems so natural to us now, that thinking of it as a new concept is difficult to do.  The neural formations of the brain are intriguing to me.  Using different pathways to read different languages seems as if it would be harder to do.  Perhaps it is like learning languages, it is easier to do as a child when that part of the brain is still adaptable.  I find it even more interesting that the way we read defines how we read.  It seems like if we are able to read one thing, we could read anything, but that is obviously not the case.  The metaphor of Proust and the squid is very interesting.  Using the squid's examples of neural firings to learn about the process of reading is very unique.  These processes almost make me wonder why reading is still not natural to us.  It seems as though we have such an advanced learning system that we would have adapted to have reading built into us as language is.  Perhaps that will come.  But as we are turning into more digital beings, will that affect our reading abilities at all?

Orality of Language

I found this article more difficult to read.  It seemed to jump around a lot more and keep throwing out too much information without fully analyzing each idea.  It does make me wonder why people are now looking at the orality of language and what made them disregard it earlier.  Language is definitely more oral than written.  It is the primary way of communication.  I found it interesting how few oral languages have a written literature.  Why is this?  The orality of language is permanent.  There is no way the sequence of oral language could be any other way.  The concept of reading as a conversion from text to sound is very interesting.  I have never thought of this before, but it is true, when I read I can hear the words as I write them out or read them from a book.  Because writing cannot exist without orality but orality can exist without writing, texts seem as if they are not needed.  To me, it seems like it makes people today look less educated than they were hundreds of years ago because of how easy we have it.  We don't have to memorize anything.  If we need to know anything we are able to find out any possible answer with relatively little effort.  It just makes me wonder if we are really evolving at all.