From the entire subject of mediation, two questions seem more
relevant to our understanding of literacy and of its dynamics:
1.
Why, at a certain moment in human evolution, does literacy become
the main mediating instrument? 2.
Under which circumstances is language's mediating function
assumed by other sign systems? Let us answer the questions in
the order they are posed.
Language is not the only mediating instrument people use. In the
short account given so far, other mediating entities, such as
images, movements, odors, gestures, objects (stones, twigs,
bones, artifacts) were mentioned. Also mentioned was the fact
that these are quite close to what they actually refer to (as
indexical signs), or to what they depict based on a relation of
similarity (as iconic signs). However, even at this level of
reduced generality and limited coherence and consistency, human
beings can express themselves beyond the immediate and direct.
The cave paintings of the Paleolithic age should be mentioned
again in this respect. The immediate is the cave itself. It is
shelter, and its physical characteristics are perceived in
direct relation to its function. The surprise comes in noticing
how these characteristics become part of the practical
experience of sharing what is not present by involving a
mediating element. The drawings are completions, continuations,
extensions of the ridges of the stone walls of the cave. This is
not a way of speaking. A better quality photograph, not to
mention the actual drawings in the caves, reveals how the lines
of the relief are extended into the drawing and made part of
them. The first layer of exchange of information among people is
comparison, focused on similarities, then on differences. We
infer from here that, before drawing-a practical experience
involving a major cognitive step-the human beings seeking shelter
in the cave noticed how a certain natural configuration-cloud,
plant, rock formation, the trail left by erosion-looked like the
head or tail of an animal, or like the human head, for example.
The completion of this look-alike form-when such a completion was
physically possible-was an instance of practical self-definition
and of shared experience. When the act of completion was
physically performed, probably by accident at the beginning, the
immediate natural (the cave) was appropriated for a new function,
something other than merely shelter. The shape of the wings of
galleries in the Altamira or Niaux caves suggests analogies to
the male-female distinction, a sexual identifier but also a first
step towards distinctions based on perceived differences. The
selection of a certain cave from among others was the result of
an effort, no matter how primitive, to express. Together, this
selected physical structure and the added elements became a
statement regarding a very limited universe of existence and its
shared distinctions. Further on, the animals depicted, the
sequence, the addition of mytho-magical signs (identification of
more general notions such as hand, wound, or different animals)
make the painted cave an expression of an inserted thought about
the world, that is, about the limited environment constituting
the world. In the case of Egyptian pictographic writing, we know
that images were used as mediating devices in such sophisticated
instances as the burial of pharaohs and in their life after
death. In the universe of ideographic languages (such as Chinese
and Japanese), the mediating function of images constituting the
written is different. Combinations of ideograms constitute new
ideograms. Accordingly, self-constitution in language takes over
experiences of combining different things in order to obtain
something different from each of the combined ingredients. In
some ways, the added efficiency facilitated by mediations was
augmented by formal qualities that would eventually establish the
realm of aesthetic practical experiences. This should come as no
surprise, since we know from many practical experiences or the
remote past that formal qualities often translate into higher
functionality.
Language use, which opened access to generality and abstraction,
allowed humans to insert elements supporting an optimized
exchange of information in the structure of social relations,
and to participate in the conventions of social life. There is
not only the trace of the immediate experience in a word, there
is also the shared convention of mediated interactions.
Language, in its development over time, is thus a very
difficult-to-decode dynamic history of common praxis. We
understand this from the way the use of the ax, millstone, or
animal sacrifice expanded, along with the appropriate vocabulary
and linguistic expression, from the universe of the Semites to
the Indo-Europeans. Reconstructed vocabulary from the region of
the Hittite kingdom testifies to the landscape (there are many
words for mountains), to trees (the Hittites distinguished
various species), to animals (leopard, lion, monkey), and to
tools (wheel- based means of transportation).
Language is not only a reflection of the past, but also a program
for future work. The nuclei of agriculture where language
emerged (in China, Africa, southeastern Europe) were also
centers of dissemination of practical experience. Writing, even
when it only records the past, does it for the future. Progress
in writing resulted in better histories, but moreover in new
avenues for future praxis. In the ideal of literacy, the
individual states a program of unifying scope in a social reality
of diverse means and diverse goals. Literacy as such is an
insertion between a rather complex social structure, nature, and
among the members of society. Within a culture, it is a generic
code which facilitates dialogue among the members of the literate
community and among communities of different languages. Its
scope is multidimensional. Its condition is one of mediation.
A major mediating element in the rationale of industrial
society, literacy fulfilled the function of a coordinating
mechanism for mediations made otherwise than through language,
along the assembly line, for instance. Obviously conceived on the
linear, sequential model of time and language, the assembly line
optimally embodied requirements characteristic of complex
integration. Once the reductionist practice of dividing work
into smaller, specialized activities became necessary, the
results of these activities had to be integrated in the final
product. At the level of technology of industrial society,
literacy-based human practical experiences of self-constitution
defined the scope and character of labor division,
specialization, integration, and coordination.