История письма и чтения. Асафова Г.К. - 14 стр.

UptoLike

Составители:

Рубрика:

UNIT 2

THE FUNCTIONS OF WRITING

Given that literacy is not a prerequisite of rationality and civilization, it may

be asked why writing systems were invented and why, when they were, they so

completely displaced preexisting oral traditions. Many accounts have been given of

the dramatic impact of the encounter with written text on an “oral” culture. Isak

Dinesen, in her autobiographical Out of Africa, reported on the response of Kikuyu

tribesmen to their first exposures to written texts: “I learned that the effect of a

piece of news was many times magnified when it was imparted by writing. The

messages that would have been received with doubt and scorn if they had been

given by word of mouth were now taken as gospel truth.”

Certainly writing has been observed to displace oral traditions. The

American scholar Albert Lord wrote: “When writing is introduced and begins to be

used for the same purposes as the oral narrative song, when it is employed for

telling stories and is widespread enough to find an audience capable of reading,

this audience seeks its entertainment and instruction in books rather than in the

living songs of men, and the older art gradually disappears.”

The adoption and use of writing systems depend primarily on their ability to

preserve language and information through time and across space. But the use of a

writing system for this purpose is shaped in part by the nature of the system and by

the cultural practices in the society that has adopted it. These uses tend, therefore,

to be local and specific and characteristic of a particular literate society.

The Canadian economist Harold Innis classified writing systems into two

basic types: those that bind through time, exemplified by Egyptian hieroglyphics

carved in stone and Akkadian cuneiform incised in clay; and those that bind across

space, exemplified by the portable papyri used by the Romans. Writing used to

store information for posterity may be considered to serve an archival function.

Such writing may be used not only for constructing, accumulating, and preserving