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LiteracysOstensible

Consequences...

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the literacy thesis

strong text theory

autonomous literacy theorygreat divide theory

(relatively) synonymous labels

for the ideas about literacywere talking about...

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Goody &Watt

key people were talking about

when we talk about this...

Ong Olson Havelock

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Texts linear/literal, based on logical

organization.People who read become more like

our textsmore linear, logical.

We internalize texts and itreorganizes our nature.

strong text

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Goody and WattLiteracy leads to

democracy,rational thought,

skepticism,

history,rule of law...

strong text

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In groups, articulate G&Ws claim(s) about...

1. democracy,2. rational thought,

3. skepticism,

4. history,5. rule of law...

strong text: how, then?

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David Olson

The faculty of language stands at the

center of our conception of mankind,speech makes us human and literacy

makes us civilized.From Utterance to Text: The Bias of Language in

Speech and Writing.

strong text

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David Olson (summarizing Goody & Watt):

Words as distinctive conceptualentities that could be inventoried and

analyzed, owe their existence to

writing.

strong text

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David Olson (summarizing Goody & Watt):

a writing system and a tradition of writing is not a

neutral practice; it allows us, indeed invites us to think

about language and mind in some new ways. It did so byinfluencing discourse more generally, by introducing new

genres of both speech and writing. These range from the

lists and tables examined by Goody to genealogies and

chronicles, to history and laws, to science and

literature...

strong text

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Eric Havelock

The civilization created by the Greeks and Romans was

the first on the earths surface which was founded upon

the activity of the common reader; the first to be equippedwith the means of adequate expression in the inscribed

word; the first to be able to place the inscribed word in

general circulation; the first, in short to become literate in

the full meaning of that term and to transmit its literacy

to us.The Literate Revolution in Greece and Its Cultural Consequences

strong text

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Halverson (1992)

a thin tissue of vague suggestions,

gratuitous assumptions and

unsupported generalizations

criticisms of strong text

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Strong text =

technologically deterministic

criticisms of strong text

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technological determinism:"new technologies are discovered, by an essentially

internal process of research and development, which then

sets the conditions for social change and progress.Progress, in particular, is the history of these inventions,

which 'created the modern world' The effects of the

technologies, whether direct or indirect, foreseen or

unforeseen, are as it were the rest of history."Raymond Williams, Television, Technology, and Cultural Form

criticisms of strong text

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technological determinism:Technology develops under the weight of some

internal logic, autonomously from social forces

Technological progression is linear and the new

replaces the old

Technology exerts and outside impact on society

(usually using words like impacts, effects, etc)

criticisms of strong text