What seems to be the issue of putting the past in the right
perspective (with the appearance of historic revisionism) is
actually the expression of pragmatic needs in regard to the
present and the future. The subject, in view of its many
implications, deserves a closer examination outside, but not in
disregard of, the political controversy it has already stirred
up. Writing is a form of commitment that extends from the
Phoenician agreements and Egyptian records, religious and legal
texts on clay and in stone, to the medieval oath and later to
contracts. Written language encodes, at many levels (alphabet,
sentence structure, semantics, etc.), the nature of the relation
among those addressed in writing. A tablet that the Egyptians
used for identifying locally traded commodities addressed very
few readers. A reduced scale of existence, work, and trade was
reflected in very direct notation. For the given context, the
tablets supported the expected efficiency. In the framework of
the Roman Empire, labeling of construction materials-roof tiles,
drainage pipes-distributed within and outside the Empire,
involved more elaborate elements. These materials were stamped
during manufacture and helped builders select what matched their
needs. More people were addressed. Their backgrounds were more
diverse: they functioned in different languages and in
different cultural contexts. Their practical experience as
builders was more complex than that of Egyptian dealers in grain
or other commodities who operated locally. Stamping construction
materials signaled a commitment to fulfill building needs and
expectations. Over time, such commitments became more elaborate
and separated themselves from the product. With literacy, they
became formalized contracts covering various pragmatic contexts.
They bear all the characteristics of literacy. They also become
representative of the conflict between means of a literate
nature and means appropriate to the levels of efficiency
expected in the civilization of illiteracy.
A short look at contracts as we experience them today reveals
that contracts are based on languages of their own, hard to
decipher by even the average literate person. They quantify
economic expectations, legal provisions, and tax consequences.
Written in English, they are expected to address the entire
world. In the European Community, each of the member countries
expects a contract to be formulated in its own language.
Consequently, delays and extra costs can make the transaction
meaningless. Actually, the contract, not only the packaging and
distribution labels, could be provided in the universal language
of machine-readable bar codes. Ours is a pragmatic framework of
illiteracy that results in the generation of languages
corresponding to functions but pertinent to the fast-changing
circumstances that make the activity possible in the first
place. In a world of tremendous competition, fast exchange, and
accelerated growth of new expectations, the contract itself and
the mechanisms for executing it have to be efficient.
Relations to power, property, and national identity expressed in
language and stabilized through the means of literacy were also
embodied in myths, religions, poetry and literature. Indeed,
from the epic poems of ancient civilizations to the ballads of
the troubadours and the songs of the minstrels, and to poetry
and literature, references were made to property and feelings,
to the living and the dead. Records of life were kept and
commitments were reiterated. Today many literates despair at the
thought that these are displaced by the dead poetry or prose of
the computer-generated variety. It is unquestionable that
information storage and access redefined the scope of
commitments and historic records, and ultimately redefined
memory.
From whatever angle we look at language and literacy, we come
back to the people who commit themselves in the practical
experience of their self-constitution. While the relation of
people to language is symptomatic of their general condition, to
understand how and why this relation changes is to understand how
and why human beings change. With the ideal of literacy, we
inherited the illusion that to understand human beings is to
understand human language. It is actually the other way around-if
we understand language as a dynamic practical experience in its
own right. There is a deeper level that we have to explore-that
of the human activity through which we project our being into
the reality of existence, and make it sensible and understandable
to others. It is only in the act of expressing ourselves through
work, contemplation, enjoyment, and wonder that we become what
we are for ourselves and for others. Under pragmatic
circumstances characteristic of the establishment of the species
and its history up to our time, this required language and led
to the need for literacy. As a matter of fact, literacy can be
seen as a form of commitment, one among the successive
commitments that individuals make and the human species enters.
For over 2,500 years, these circumstances seemed to be eternal
and dominated our existence. But as humankind outgrows the
pragmatics based on the underlying structure of literacy, means
different from language, that is, means different from those
constituting the framework of literacy and of literacy-based
commitments become necessary.