Okay, this might not be significant at all for this class, but we spent a lot of time talking about verbal versus written language today, and that got me thinking about illiteracy. I, being at least semi-literate and not exactly remembering a time when I couldn't read, can't really begin to imagine how the whole of language is comprehended by a person who cannot read. I associate words I hear with their written form, and whenever I see the written form, I hear the words in my head. Hearing the word “dog” brings to mind “D-O-G” for me prior to the visual image of an actual dog. So, for an illiterate person, the only association they have with “dog” is the image, and not really the word. Illiteracy would force a dependence on images and the strictly audile signifiers of language in communication. I would imagine that because of this, the actual language becomes somewhat less significant maybe and that the visual might take more dominance. And although Plato would argue that the verbal variation of language is superior to the written form, the different cultural constructions that go into verbal language are as varying and complex as the ones we discussed in class for the written form. There’s inflection, tone, pronunciation, and, if the speaker is present, there are things to worry about such as body language and expression (which could be argued to be something of a visual language all on their own).
And what about the gap between the spoken and written forms of words? Why on earth should “D-O-G” be pronounced the way it is? That’s something of its own complex question, especially when layered upon the question of why “D-O-G” represents the walking shag carpet my parents own in the first place. And, as we all know from studying different languages, one combination of letters is pronounced one way in one language and very differently in another (or, God bless the French, sometimes the letters aren’t pronounced at all). Pronunciation itself becomes its own cultural construction, and is a “convention that has to be learned” just as much as applying that word to its signified (849). So everything about language, from its spelling to the correct way of pronouncing that combination of letters, has everything to do with culture and nothing to do with the signified itself.
So now I’m rather off my initial thought of illiteracy, but that is my basic question for you guys. How would being illiterate influence a person’s relationship with language? Would it influence it at all?
First off: I think this is super-relevant/significant to the discussion of Saussure and later theorists who lovingly dink around with language.
ReplyDeleteAnd I think you're actually proving Saussure's point. Language is completely arbitrary! There's no reason that the scratched symbols we communally agree on should be pronounced as they are, nor that they should be indicative of the signified/sign that they are signifying.
Being illiterate actually sort of removes you a level or two from the ridiculous (-ly fun) arbitrariness by removing one of those completely arbitrary systems involved in language (Oh, hello there, Plato. Fancy meeting you here).
Thirdly: isn't this fun?! :D
I agree with Pax.
ReplyDeleteI have a handful of friends from home who are illiterate, and their lives revolve around visual communication, but that doesn't mean they're not verbal. The friend I know best is obsessed with movies. He's obsessed with plays. He's obsessed with train mechanics. He loves music.
All of this being said, he loves and communicates these things in the exact same way I communicate the things I favor, and in fact we even like many of the same things. Except for one. The internet.
He (and the other few people I know who have trouble with reading and writing, or can't read and write), can't go on the internet. The last time we were all in a group, the rest of us ended up talking exclusively about college and viral videos. He talked about trains. We talked about blogs, he talked about trains. We laughed at Charlie Bit Me, and he was frustrated and left out. Which is exactly why the internet isn't communist. While both of our lives revolved around videos (TV, movies, plays), words
Literacy and illiteracy separated us not through words, which although arbitrary we still shared, but it instead separated us by a growing class difference and what we had access to. College. Youtube. Workable salaries.
I'm gonna address the off-topic part. :)
ReplyDeleteThe pronunciation of the same letters differently: it's all about signifying meaning versus signifying sound. I'll cross reference you to my blog post, which explains a bit about this idea, but there's more to it.
We have what are called phonemes and allophones. Phonemes are units of sound which create meaning. Allophones are units of sound which are different from the original phoneme, but don't create a new meaning.
See: /pɪn/ vs /bɪn/ vs /tɪn/ vs /dɪn/ vs /kɪn/
Each of these is recognized (in sound) as a different word in English, right? That means that the p, b, t, d, and k all signify meaning.
Now put your hand in front of your mouth and say "pick", "pet", and "poetry". Feel the puff of air on the last one? That's technically a different sound, though we don't recognize it in English.
The reason different languages using the same alphabet have the same symbol for different sounds is that they have a similar sort of phonemic system. Although the Germans think that J should make a Y sound (how silly!), the reason they use the letter has to do with phonemes rather than a spelling meaning. The J signifies no different meaning from the Y.
All this to say, language is more tied up with the sound of it than a literate person might think. We use the same letters (see my "ed" example in my blog post) for all sort of sounds because writing signifies meaning in a totally different way!
I like you all.
ReplyDeleteSo, I'm wondering a few things on this count. First, we've talked on one side about how language has the potential to remove you from the thought, especially written language. So, if this is the case, doesn't that entail that those who are illiterate are actually closer to their thoughts, and further from miscontruction/interpretation of said thoughts? I'm completely spacing on which theorist talked about this (Plato?), but wouldn't this be better?
Next thought is regarding Saussure's interpretation of language. I think that, as much as Saussure talked some about the written language, he wouldn't care about literacy or not, as much as understanding, and how that changes (here moving into your example of D-O-G etc) within culture and society. In that case, the illiterate wouldn't be on any different plane from the literate.
I think Sarah is onto something. The issue is more socio-economic than cognitive. It has to do w/ the "skills" that one develops. Everyone can assign meaning to sets of symbols, but not all of those assignations can be translated into a vocation.
ReplyDelete