Assumptions

The modern Western world assumes that literacy is widespread and necessary, its skills as important as breathing, eating and sleeping. We need the skill of writing to type internet addresses; we require the skill of reading to understand them. Graphologists even interpret needs and neuroses by the way we form our letters. Simultaneously, we experience symptoms of non-literate or even post-literate environments. Game interfaces may depend on icons rather than writing. The images that dominate our screens sometimes appear to operate outside the written word and create non-verbal ‘texts’. These are not trends of future-shock: instead they are features of the constant adjustments through which we represent the world. The oscillation in the West between literacy and non-literacy highlights the connections between text, image, sound, gesture, word and writing. These are not simply important in themselves; they act as social and economic markers. Elites are created and sustained through their ability to control or circumvent the tools of literacy because, however post-literate Western societies may appear, their base is alphabet and keyboard. Thanks to technology these tools are ever more powerful and popularised; thanks to their pervasiveness this is not always apparent. Throughout the world many cultures have long subsisted, and continue to flourish, through the power of their elites to control the written word and to define verbal registers.