In viewing the market in its relation to the civilization of
literacy, and that of illiteracy, we must first establish a
conceptual frame of reference for discussing the specific role
of language as a mediating element characteristic of the market.
In particular, we should examine the functions filled by
literacy in allowing people to diversify markets and make them
more effective. When the limits of literacy's mediating
capabilities are reached, its efficiency becomes subject to
doubt. This does not happen outside the market, as some
scholars, educators, and politicians would have us believe, or
want to happen. It is within the market that this stage is
acknowledged, rendering intellectual travail itself a product
negotiated in the market, as literacy itself already is.
To establish the desired conceptual frame of reference, I take
the perspective of market as a sign process through which people
constitute themselves. Consequently, transactions can be seen as
extensions of human biology: products of our work embody the
structural characteristics of our natural endowment and address
needs and expectations pertinent to these characteristics. These
products are extensions of our personality and our culture, as
constituted in expectations and values characteristic of the
human species becoming self-aware and defining goals for the
future. With language, and more so with literacy, markets become
interpretive affairs, projective instantiations of what we are,
in the process of becoming what we must be as the human scale
reaches yet another threshold. Human self-constitution through
markets reflects attained levels of productive and creative
power, as well as goals pertinent initially to survival, later
to levels of well-being, and now to the complexity of the global
scale of current and future human activity.
From barter to the trading of commodities futures and stock
options, from money to the cashless society, markets constitute
frameworks for higher transaction efficiency, often equated with
profit. The broad arguments, such as the market as semiosis,
often stumble upon specific aspects: Semiosis or not, practical
experience or not, how come a rumor sends a company's stock into
turmoil while an audited report goes unnoticed? The hidden
structure of the processes discussed throughout this book might
have more to do with explanations and predictive models than the
many clarifications empowered by academic aura.