When the sign of speech became a sign of language (alphabets,
words, sentences), the process described above deepened. The
concrete (written, stabilized) sign participated in capturing
generality via the abstraction of lines, shapes, intersections,
in wax, in clay, on parchment, or on another medium. The
succession of individual signs (letters, words) was
metamorphosed into the sign of the general. For centuries,
writing was only a container for speech, not operational
language. This observation does not contradict the still
controversial Saphir-Whorf hypothesis that language influences
thinking. Rather, the observation makes clearer the fact that
active influence did not originate from language itself, but is
a result of succeeding practical experiences. Had a recorder of
spoken language, let us imagine, been invented before writing, a
need or use for literacy would have taken very different forms.
Humans did not dispose of a system of signs as a person disposes
of a machine or of elements to be assembled. They were their own
scripts, always re-constituting in notation an experience they
had or might have had. In other words, the functioning of
languages is essentially a record of the functioning of human
beings. The Hebrew alphabet started as shorthand notation
reduced to consonants by scribes who retained only the root of
the word before recording its marks on parchment. Due to the
small scale and shared pragmatics of readers, this shorthand
sufficed. In Mayan hieroglyphics, and in Mesopotamian
ideographs, as well as in other known forms of notation, the
intention was the same: to give clues so that another person
could give life to the language, could resuscitate it. Increased
scale and consequently less homogenous practical experiences
forced the Hebrew scribes to add diacritical marks indicating
vowels. The written language of the Sumerians and Mesopotamians
also changed as the pragmatic framework changed.
That writing is an experience of self-constitution, reflected in
the structure of ideas, might not sound convincing enough unless
the biological component is at least brought up. Derrick de
Kerkhove noticed that all languages written from right to left
use only consonants. The cognitive reading mechanism involved in
deciphering them differs from that of languages using vowels,
too, and written from left to right. Once the Greeks took over
the initially consonantal alphabet of the Phoenicians and
Hebrews, they added vowels and changed the direction of
writing-at the beginning using the Bustrophedon (how the oxen
plow), i.e., both directions. Afterwards, the direction
corresponding to a cognitive structure associated with
sequentiality was adopted. Consequently, the functioning of the
Greek language changed as well. Ideas resulting in the context
of pre-Socratic and Socratic dialogue have a more pronounced
deductive, speculative nuance than those expressed in the
analytic discourse of written Greek philosophy.
One can further this thought by noticing the so-called bias
against the left-hand that is deeply rooted in many languages
and the beliefs they express. It seems that the right (hand and
direction) is favored in ways ranging from calling things right,
or calling servants of justice Herr Richter (Master Right, the
German form of address for a judge), or favoring things done
with the right hand, on the right side, etc. The very idea of
what is right, what is just, human rights, originates from this
preference. The left hand is associated, in a pragmatic and
cognitive mode dominated by the right, with weakness,
incompetence, even sin. (In the New Testament, sinners are told
to go to the left side of God after judgment.) While the
implicit symbolism is worth more than this passing remark, it is
worthwhile noticing that in our days, the domination of the right
in writing and in literacy expectations is coming to an end. The
efficiency of a right-biased praxis is not high enough to
satisfy expectations peculiar to globality. The process is part
of the broader experience through which literacy itself is
replaced by the many partial literacies defining the
civilization of illiteracy.
Since ideas come into being in the experience of language, their
dissemination and validation, critical to the efficiency of
human effort at any given scale, depends on the portability of
the medium in which they are expressed. Through writing, the
portability of language was no longer reducible to the mobility
of those speaking it. Ideas expressed in writing could be tested
outside the context in which they originated. This associated
the function of dissemination through language to the function of
validation in the pragmatic context. A tablet, a papyrus scroll,
a codex, a book, or a digital simile have in common their
condition as a record resulting from practical experiences; but
it is not what they have in common that explains their
efficiency. Portability is telling of pragmatic requirements so
different that nothing before the digital record could be as
pervasive and globally present. Except for a password, we need
nothing with us in order to access knowledge distributed today
through networks. We are freeing ourselves from space and time
coordinates. Literacy cannot function within such broad
parameters. The domain of alternatives constitutes the
civilization of illiteracy.