TTYL, Walter

I would love to know what Walter Ong would say about text messages, the writer, and the audience. He states about letters, “The writer has to set up another relationship to the reader and has to set the reader in a relationship to the writer different from that of the nonchoriographical personal contact.” (19). The writer, even when he or she knows the person to who he/she is writing, must imagine and construct the audience. The issue of “nonchoriographical” contact is a more complex issue in the present day, however.

Much of Ong’s theory of audience construction is based on the distance of time between the reader and the writer. Those who speak are present with their audiences; those who write are not. Given the speed of textual communication in the present day (email, instant messaging, and text messaging), a writer and his/her audience are not always distant in time. Two people who are texting back and forth to each other are actually exchanging author/audience roles quite rapidly. However, in types of electronic communication, distance in time is not always consistent. It is possible to text someone who has his/her phone off and may not respond for several hours. So, how does audience construction vary with time? If a writer sends a text not knowing when or if his/her audience will text back, is the audience construction the same if he or she gets an immediate reply or a reply delayed by three hours?

Ong does write about a few situations in which written communication functions as oral does (he notes that two people who are deaf might communicate by writing, or two people who speak different dialects of Chinese) (10), but I don’t think that he would put texting in this category, despite the fact that it often substitutes for oral communication, given his stated interest in examining writing situations in “their full implications” (9). (Frankly, I think it would be fascinating to compare the discourse of written notes passed in class – I still have some that I surreptitiously wrote in middle school – to texting conversations between students in class now. Someone could probably get a dissertation out of that.) Ong’s theory of audience construction and writers also accounts for the practical space difference between authors and audiences. Are two students texting each other in the classroom, who see each other, still “fictionalizing” their audiences? (What role does the glaring teacher play?)

Ong writes, “Knowledge of the degrees of admissible ignorance for readers is absolutely essential if one is to publish successfully…it takes time to get a feel for the roles that readers can be expected to play in the modern academic world” (19). This statement is certainly true for academic publishing, but I think it might also apply to texting. I am an ever-failing texter (both as a writer and reader) because I don’t really know the degrees of admissible ignorance. In texting, there are certain abbreviations considered standard as well as conventions of telling the reader necessary information without extra length – I don’t know these, and I don’t know when to use them. As a writer, I tend to send texts (which I do very rarely) that are more like paragraphs, and everything is spelled out in conventional English. I do not abbreviate or shorten, and this drives my audience – my sister – up the wall. Obviously, I have not successfully adapted my text to the reader. Perhaps I have not “fictionalized” my audience correctly.

Interestingly, my sister’s texts to me have changed. They used to be things like, “What ABT going 2 ____. H. TTYL.” This completely befuddled me, and so I never answered, or would call and say, “What are you talking about?” This morning, I got a three sentence long text in normal English! Sarah has fictionalized her audience well, and thus has what Ong might call knowledge of the degrees of admissible ignorance for a very specific audience, and the ability to “publish” successfully. This does beg the question, what happens in the quick audience/author exchange of texting when one writer has effectively fictionalized the audience and the other hasn’t?