Writing

The Nature, Development, and Teaching of Written Communication

M. Farr Whiteman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135875497
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First Published in 1982. This is Volume 1 of a series on Writing, the nature, development and teaching of written communication and focuses on Variation in Writing: Functional and linguistic-Cultural Differences. The theme of these two volumes, broadly defined, might best be phrased as two questions: How can we learn more about writing? and How can we learn more about the interaction between teaching to write and learning to write? The papers in these two volumes were originally prepared in draft form for the National Institute of Education's first Conference on Writing in June, 1977.

Part I

Socio-Cultural Functions of Writing

1	The Ethnography of Literacy

John F. Szwed

Center for Urban Ethnography and
Department of Folklore and Folklife
University of Pennsylvania

Literacy would appear to be one of the few elements of education that everyone agrees to be a necessity of modernity. The capacity to read and write is causally associated with earning a living, achieving expanded horizons of personal enlightenment and enjoyment, maintaining a stable and democratic society, and, historically, with the rise of civilization itself. “Underdeveloped” countries have had reading and writing touted to them as the means of a quantum leap into the future. And in the United States (especially since the 1960’s) illiteracy has been singled out as a root cause of poverty.

Yet literacy as an ideal seems to be suffering a crisis. The wealthy nations of the world are now encountering rather massive failures in reading and writing among students at all levels; and it appears that despite universal schooling, a continuing percentage of the population of these nations has difficulties with these skills. In addition, there have developed “critics” of literacy, some of whom have questioned the feasibility of universal literacy as assumed in the West;¹ others now even raise questions about its ultimate relation to civilization.²

And behind all of this there are profund shifts appearing in the world’s reading habits: in the U.S., for example, the reading (and publishing) of novels is in decline, while the reading of plays and poetry is at almost zero level. Instead, the amorphous area usually called non-fiction is on the ascendancy (though readers of an earlier generation might have difficulty in seeing the differences between the new techniques of non-fiction and fiction). The fact that many, perhaps most, English classes in the United States are geared toward fiction, drama and poetry makes this development all the more poignant.

Since professionals in the field of reading and writing instruction feel that there now exist sound, workable methods of teaching literacy, the responsibility for failure is assigned variously to poor teaching, overcrowded classes, family background (and the “culture of poverty”), the competition with the new media, or even to the directions of contemporary society itself.

But the stunning fact is that we do not fully know what literacy is. The assumption that it is simply a matter of the skills of reading and writing does not even begin to approach the fundamental problem: What are reading and writing for? Is the nature of the ability to read and write something on which there is in fact near agreement? Can these skills be satisfactorily tested? Do writing and reading always accompany each other as learned skills? Should they? Even on questions of functional literacy, can we agree on what the necessary minimal functions are for everyday life? It is entirely possible that teachers are able to teach reading and writing as abstract skills, but do not know what reading and writing are for in the lives and futures of their students.

I propose that we step back from the question of instruction, back to an even more basic “basic,” the social meaning of literacy: that is, the roles these abilities play in social life; the varieties of reading and writing available for choice; the contexts for their performance; and the manner in which they are interpreted and tested, not by experts, but by ordinary people in ordinary activities. In doing this, I am following a recent trend in language studies, one which recognizes that it is not enough to know what a language looks like and to be able to describe and measure it, but one must also know what it means to its users and how it is used by them.

Literacy has typically been viewed as a yes-and-no matter, easily determined: either one reads and writes or one doesn’t. And put in such terms, the goal of education is to produce a society of people who are equally competent at these skills. But the fact that no society has yet reached this state should give us pause. Historically, we know that most societies have produced specialists who have handled many of the necessities of literacy: the priest-scribe relationship, for instance, is widely remarked upon in studies of the development of civilization. In contemporary complex societies we are well aware of the negative correlation of skills in literacy with lower socioeconomic standing. But a closer look suggests that even among those of privileged background, these abilities are complexly patterned, and not at all equally distributed—the range of what is or can be “read” or “written” among, say, doctors, lawyers and teachers is often surprising. And even among those of other socioeconomic classes there is a great variety of such skills, such as can be found spread among active church members, avid followers of sports, and committed members of political parties. Consider the case of ethnic or immigrant neighborhoods, where such a distribution of abilities has a considerable historical background—that is, where certain individuals have served (and continue to serve) as interpreters of the law, citizens’ benefits and rights, and the like, as well as readers and writers of letters and public documents. The distribution of these skills in bilingual and immigrant neighborhoods and communities is a complex and unexplored area. And even though the range and the number of these communities is simply not known at present, their clustering in urban areas gives the matter some urgency.

Beyond the question of who participates to what degree in reading and writing, there are even more vexing issues. Clearly, there are problems in defining the activities of reading and writing themselves. To take a simple case: what a school may define as reading may not take account of what students read in various contexts other than the classroom. A boy, otherwise labeled as retarded and unable to read assigned texts, may have considerable skill at reading and interpreting baseball record books. Or a student who shows little interest or aptitude for reading may read Jaws in study hall. The definitions of reading and writing, then, must include social context and function (use) as well as the reader and the text of what is being read and written.

The nexus at which reader, or writer, context, function and text join is sometimes glossed as reading motivation. Reading and writing skills may indeed vary according to motivation, with varying degrees of skill following differing degrees of motivation. But all of these elements form a complex whole which should not be reduced to a simple diagnosis. A reader’s motivation may also vary according to context, function and text. And even motivation itself is varied: one may be moved to read by nostalgia, ambition, boredom, fear, etc.

Throughout, what one might expect to discover is that absolutes are few in questions of literacy, and that the roles of individuals and their places within social groups are preeminent in determining both what is read and written and what is necessary to reading and writing.

It should not be surprising to see differences in literacy between members of different ethnic groups, age groups, sexes, socioeconomic classes, etc.³ Indeed, one might hypothesize the existence of literacy-cycles, or individual variations in abilities and activities that are conditioned by one’s stage and position in life. What I would expect to discover, then, is not a single-level of literacy, on a single continuum from reader to non-reader, but a variety of configurations of literacy, a plurality of literacies.

Even the everyday judgments of non-educators of what is or is not literate ability or activity is highly variable. Where for some, ability to spell is the primary marker, to others, choice of reading matter is foremost—the “classics” vs. gothic novels, the New York Times vs. tabloids, etc. To still others, success on standardized tests is everything. And such commonsense judgments, whether reasonable or not, help to shape the ultimate social definition of literacy.

Some words, then, about a few of these five elements of literacy—text, context, function, participants, and motivation.

Texts: What is it that People Read and Write?

These are the primary questions, and on the surface they appear easily answered. Reading, for instance, would seem to be ascertainable by means of library circulation figures, publishers’ sales figures, and questionnaires. But statistics are of limited use for a variety of reasons: first, because they have not been gathered for these purposes and thus give us only the grossest of information about texts (and none whatsoever about use). There is no agreement among publishers on what is a book, for instance. (Nor is there any among readers: magazines are often called “books” in much of the English-speaking world). What is literature? No agreement. Distinctions between genres and categories such as functional literature vs. artistic literature are of little use. Beyond the subjective judgments involved, it takes little imagination to think up artistic uses of functional literature or functional uses of artistic writing. (Can sports writing be artistic? Functional? Both?) And even seemingly well-established classes such as fiction vs. non-fiction are the basis of a very lively debate among scholars today.⁴

Circulation and sales figures tell us nothing about the informal circulation of literature, and at least among the working classes, borrowing and loaning of reading matter is common. One need only think of reading done in doctors’ offices, the reading of newspapers and magazines found on public transportation, at work, etc., to sense the possibilities.

Consider also some of the reading matter that is not normally included under the category “literature:” handbills, signs, graffiti, sheet music, junk mail, cereal boxes, captions on television, gambling slips and racing tip sheets, juke-box labels, and pornography. (In some small towns, “Adult” bookstores are the only bookstores, and sometimes have holdings that rival, in number at least, the local library.) Victor-Levy Beaulieu, in Manual de la petite litterature du Quebec (1974), provides an anthology of the kind of literature which is produced and read within a rural parish in French Canada: it includes printed sermons, temperance tracts, stories of the lives of local saints and martyrs, parish monographs, and life stories used as models for improvement.

In addition, there is the question of the relation of the form of the text to other aspects of reading or writing. Consider the need for short, broken passages (such as found in mysteries and Reader’s Digest condensations) for brief commuter trips, as opposed to longer passages for longer trips (War and Peace for an ocean voyage, say) or the time needed to register “raw” meaning as well as rhymes, puns, and irony in public signs in shopping centers and along roads. (The eclipse of Burma Shave signs by increased speed limits is a case in point.)⁵

Nor, incidentally, does traditional concern with literacy take account of the influence of the character of typography on readers. One small but important example is the current debate over the widespread use of Helvetic type (as used by Amtrak, Arco, Mobil and numerous other business and governmental sign and logo uses). The issue turns on whether the type’s nature (presumably depersonalized, authoritative, and straightforward) brings unfair and misleading pressure to bear on its readers, as it appears to be the face of the largest and most powerful forces in America.

Function and Context: Why and under what Circumstances is Reading and Writing Done?

Available statistics tell us nothing about the variety of functions that reading and writing can serve. To consider only the use of books, in addition to providing information and pleasure—they are bought as decorations, as status symbols, gifts, investments, and for other reasons yet to be discovered.

Similarly, virtually nothing is known about the social contexts of reading and writing and how these contexts affect these skills. A quick beginning inventory of reading contexts would include bedside reading, coffee-break and lunch-time reading, vacation reading, reading to children, Sunday reading (perhaps the day of most intense literary activity in the United States and Europe), reading during illness, educational reading (both in institutions and informally), crisis reading (psychological, physical, spiritual), sexual reading, reading to memorize, commuter reading, reading to prevent interaction with others, etc. (In theory, at least, there is a form of reading specific to every room: books are sold for kitchens, coffeetables, desks, bedrooms (The Bedside X) or bathrooms. On the latter, see Alexander Kira, The Bathroom. N.Y.: Bantam, 1977, pp. 197–201, 287. There are also books designed for types of housing, as in English “country house” books, etc.)

Conventional thinking about reading and writing far too often uses a much out-dated model of literacy inherited from 19th century upper-class Europe. That “book culture” assumed many conventions which we can no longer assume: a small, well-educated elite; considerable spatial and temporal privacy (usually provided by large houses and the protection of wife and servants); a firm belief in the mimetic power and ultimate truthfulness of language; and possibly a belief in immortality and transcendance as mediated by books—that is, a sense that book life was somehow greater than real life.

We might here also postulate the possibility of a difference between public and private literacy, between what one reads and writes at work, at school and elsewhere. Susan U. Philips⁶ has shown that at least in the case of one Native American group, there are substantial differences between these two domains, such that they may have direct and serious implications for education for literacy. For example, if children are not read to at home, and the school assumes that activity as part of its foundations for reading instruction, then such students are likely to encounter difficulties in learning to read. The important point to note here is not so much whether reading stories to children is or is not a proper or effective tool for preparing children to read, but that gaps between the two domains have serious consequences. And changes in home practices, even with the best intentions, are not easily accomplished and not necessarily desirable.

To cite yet another example: signs are written to be read but they are also located in certain locales and have specific designs and shapes. Thus the ability to read a public sign may take con...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I: Socio-Cultural Functions of Writing
• Part II: Language Differences and Writing
• Author Index
• Subject Index