Summary

The ways in which language means, both as sign and as action, differ according to the medium used. The spoken medium, in particular, bears the marks of more or less orality, more or less literacy, as measured against the characteristic features of conversational-spoken vs. essayist-written language. Cultures them-selves are more or less orate, more or less literate according to the uses their members make of the spoken and the written language in various contexts. Through the social organization of talk, culture is constructed across day-to-day dialogues, through the choice of frames and footings that speakers adopt vis-a-vis their own and others' discourse, and through the way they collaborate in the necessary facework within a variety of discourse types. Culture puts its imprint on the conversational and narrative styles of the members of a social group. These styles are generally considered to form part of people's cultural identities.

5. Print language, literate culture

The technology of writing and print technology have over time not only changed the medium of language use, but irrevocably changed our way of thinking and talking about culture. This chapter will deal with issues of text, power, and the cultural politics of literacy.

Written language, textual culture

We first need to take an historical perspective on the way technology has affected the relationship of language and culture. The invention of writing around 3000 bc transformed oral tradition, transmitted through storytelling, bardic epics, mythical reenactments and performances, into textual tradition, handed down by scribes. The culture of the text, as exemplified in the Chinese scribal culture, passed on its wisdom not through reading, but through the faithful copying of texts. It was through the rewriting of fixed texts in one's own handwriting that the truths of the ancestors got embodied anew into new generations. Copying texts was the major way of getting at the texts' meaning, and of obtaining the social prestige that came with a literate education.

The culture of the text and its respect for and obedience to textual authority was also central to the Judaic and early Christian traditions. In these cultures, revelation was to take place through commentary, exegesis, and translation. The implication was that through the study and interpretation of the sacred texts it would be possible to recover the original truths dispensed in oral form by God, angels, and the prophets. The simultaneous desirability and impossibility of that goal have been the subject of many a scholar's concern. It was the ultimate focus of the Kabbalah, a twelfth-century school of Jewish mysticism named after the Hebrew term for 'literary tradition'. What Kabbalists looked for in the Bible was not primarily philosophical ideas, but a symbolic description of the hidden process of divine life. Viewing written language itself as a micro-representation of the universe, Kabbalists built an elaborate system of meanings based on numbers and the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, in an effort to accede to the unwritten secrets of the universe. So, for example, the four letters of the Hebrew name of God, Yod he vav he (Yahweh), have in Hebrew the numerical value forty-five from their position in the alphabet, as does the word 'Adam'. From this linguistic fact, Kabbalists drew the conclusion that God is in fact Adam. The god who can be apprehended by man is himself, they claimed, the First Man. One can readily see why the Catholic Church condemned the Kabbalah as a heresy.

Textual cultures illustrate the dilemma represented by the invention of writing. As we saw in Chapter 1, writing permits record-keeping, and thus can be an aid to memory; by fixing the fluidity of speech, it makes tradition into scripture, which can then be easily codified and made into a norm, a canon, or a law. But writing, uprooted from its original context through the passing of time and through its dissemination in space, increases also the absurdity of the quest for the one true 'original' meaning. Ancient texts can only be understood though the multiple meanings given to them by latter-day commentators, exegetes, translators. Even legal documents, that try to control and legislate people's lives, have to be re-interpreted anew for every particular case.