Language in the world: properties and powers
Linguistic autonomy
Written language and the practice of literacy
The properties of written language
What, then, are the properties of written language? In our terms, written language is a second order cultural emergent property. By this we mean that it is emergent from oral language (which is, of course, temporally prior), human practice and physical resources. It is thus distinct from each, and capable of acting back on any of them.
Various writers have identified the properties of written language which differ from those of speech. Newmeyer (2002), for example, suggests that the features of languages which appear to be linked to their functionality may well change over time, as the practices of their speakers change. In particular, literacy would increase the salience of a constraint on certain formal properties of language, such as parsing pressure, for example, relative to those constraints deriving from face-to-face interaction, such as orderliness and absence of ambiguity. Halliday (1989) discusses how written discourse demonstrates features such as greater lexical density, multiple embedding and grammatical metaphor. This is consistent with Newmeyer's claim (following Givon 1979), that in early language 'discourse pressure was the primary determinant of the ordering of grammatical elements' (2002: 372), and Ong's that '[ojral structures often look to pragmatics (the convenience of the speaker), whereas chirographic structures look more to syntactics (organization of the discourse itself)' (Ong 1982). Knowledge not mediated by literacy is conceptualized and verbalized with close reference to the human lifeworld, since without writing it is difficult to structure knowledge at a distance from lived experience; and by keeping knowledge embedded within the lifeworld, orality situates knowledge within a context of struggle. Amongst the core features of texts is their suitability for travel, especially once technological developments in typography make possible efficient reproduction. This allows texts, in marked contrast to embodied utterances, to move easily beyond their site of production, thus changing the communicative context dramatically 'both as regards the emitter and as regards the receivers, with consequent implications for the nature of the message' (Goody 1986: 38).
By freeing language from its immediate dependence on human interlocution, writing enables the construction of texts that 'can lead to their contemplation, to the development of thoughts about thoughts, to a metaphysic that may require its own metalanguage' (ibid.). So whilst orality can facilitate philosophizing, it cannot produce a library of philosophy texts. In enlarging the possibilities for context-free language, writing makes memory more durable (though not necessarily more reliable): it enables words to have histories, rituals to have rules, texts to have critics.
Writing changes the nature of the World 3 of human intelligibilia by making accessibility to significant parts of it dependent upon literacy. Thus, literate, chirographic societies manifest a different relationship between culture and sociocultural interaction than that expressed in wholly oral societies. The properties of writing are experienced as constraints and enablements by people only in their practice in the world. As properties of writing qua writing they exist irrespective of the actions of specific readers and writers; they are, in this significant but limited sense, context-independent. They are actualized by specific readers and writers in particular contexts, and are only then experienced as constraints and enablements. That is, it is only when individuals or groups try to modify their circumstances, or resist the efforts of others to change them, that the properties of written language become causally influential. But the causal influence is mediated through agency, through social interaction.
Orality and literacy are emergent properties of human practice; properties say nothing about what human beings do with them, only what is possible (or not possible) when they do. Nor do they produce, in some deterministic fashion, particular types of individuals: literates are not more intelligent, more rational or more accomplished than oralists. It is simply that the contexts that people confront in literate societies and in oral societies present them with different sorts of possibilities for social interaction, whose realization depends on human agency. Indeed, in an important sense writing builds on what was implicit in oral cultures; people have not changed, but the conditions shaping what they can accomplish have.
Constitutions can be written, legal systems can be codified, files can be kept and doctrines can be fought over as a result of writing. When people write things down, the text can be used as evidence for arraignment and banned or burnt. Laws can be passed preventing the publication of certain thoughts and ideas; publishers can be intimidated. One of the important properties of written language is the particular forms of dissent that it makes possible. Not only does writing enable the formation of a continuing tradition grounded in texts, it also permits the development of alternative, dissenting readings of the texts. Furthermore, texts are 'inherently contumacious' because there is no way to directly refute a text (Ong 1982). This emphatically does not mean that the possibilities for dissent in oral-based societies are deficient, merely that individuals and groups pursue other means of resistance.
Moreover, the effects of writing are cumulative. Ideas, plans and traditions become ever more-dense as textual commentary builds upon textual commentary and so place greater and greater pressure on those excluded from access to, and participation in, the ever-expanding World 3 of textualized human knowledge. Interdiscursivity and intertextuality, both emergent properties of chirographic cultures, permit heightened forms of linguistic reflexivity as well as the commodification of language (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999).
A further cultural emergent property of speech and writing in interaction with computer technology is, of course, electronic discourse, and some see a contrast of an equivalent kind between this mode and both of the more established ones (Crystal 2001). We have no space to discuss this issue here, but the approach we would want to take would distinguish, once again, between: the distinctive properties of the cultural, semiotic system which electronic discourse comprises (similarities to, and differences from, the properties of speech and of writing); the constraints and affordances brought about by the structural distribution of material and cultural goods (access to the internet, opportunities to learn and contribute to 'netspeak' conventions); and the properties and powers of the human agents who actualize what is available to them on-line (choice, intentions, propositional knowledge, affective communication).
We will illustrates the arguments with reference to attempts to legislate on the acquisition of literacy and use of a specific language variety (a variety which is tightly linked to written language via the processes of codification and standardization) by young language learners in one country - England.
