Literacy and OralityDavid R. Olson, Nancy Torrance In this study of the social and psychological implications of literacy, sixteen distinguished scholars provide a sustained and detailed examination of the relations between orality and literacy, the traditions based on them, the functions served by them, and the psychological and linguistic processes recruited and enhanced by them. By shedding the romantic view that literacy is the road to rationality and modernity, the volume provides a more functional view of literacy. The articles place new emphasis on the relationship between speaking and writing and highlight the different ways in which people exploit the particular resources of speech and writing for special purposes, such as building communities, creating records, and specializing genres, such as prose fiction, enhancing private study and meditation, and enhancing the specialization and organization of knowledge. |
Contents
The oralliterate equation a formula for the modern mind | 11 |
A plea for research on lay literacy | 28 |
Oral metalanguage | 47 |
Rational thought in oral culture and literate decontextualization | 66 |
Cree literacy in the syllabic script | 90 |
Literacy an instrument of oppression | 105 |
Lie it as it plays Chaucer becomes an author | 111 |
The invention of self autobiography and its forms | 129 |
Thinking through literacies | 165 |
Literacy its characterization and implications | 177 |
The separation of words and the physiology of reading | 198 |
Linguists literacy and the intensionality of Marshall McLuhans Western man | 215 |
A neurological point of view on social alexia | 236 |
Literacy as metalinguistic activity | 251 |
| 271 | |
| 276 | |
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Common terms and phrases
abstract alphabetic ancient aphasia articulations autobiography BARRY SANDERS behavior Cambridge University Press century Chapter Chaucer claim cognitive communication concepts context Cree language Cree syllabic decontextualization discourse distinction dyslexia English Eric Havelock example fiction function Goody grammar Greek Havelock human hunter-gatherer hypothesis illiterates Ilongot integrative thought intensional interpretation interpuncts IVAN ILLICH JEROME BRUNER joke kiyori language lay literacy learning Lecours left-stroke linguistic literacy literate mind locution McLuhan meaning medieval memory mental metalanguage metalinguistic Milman Parry mode modern morphemes nonliterate adults notational Olson oral genres oral metalanguage orality and literacy orthography phonemic preliterate printing psychology purung readers reading and writing reflection representation right-stroke Rigveda Scholes Scribner sentence skills social society space spatial speakers speech structure style subjects syllabic script syntactic textual thinking thought tion tradition utterance verbs Western word separation writing system written texts York
Popular passages
Page 1 - What matters is what people do with literacy, not what literacy does to people. Literacy does not cause a new mode of thought, but having a written record may permit people to do something they could not do before - such as look back, study, re-interpret, and so on. Similarly, literacy does not cause social change, modernization, or industrialization. But being able to read and write may be vital to playing certain roles in an industrial society and completely irrelevant to other roles in a traditional...