Part 12 (1/2)

In order to distinguish the level at which a language is practiced, people becoues can be read as poetry, as philosophy, or as testie-based practical experiences in use at the time and place in which he was active What is not clear is how a person operating in and constituting hie identifies the level of an oral or written text, and how the person interprets it according to the context in which it ritten

The question is ofof how Plato related to language or how people today relate to language: either by overstating its i it to the extent of consciously discarding language, or certain aspects of it

Here is where the issue of mediation becoe, theory-should understand both the language of the reader and the language of the text

More generally, the third should at any instance understand the language of the entities it mediates between States, as political entities, are constituted on this assuion, and education Each suchentity introduces elements into the social structure that will finally be expressed in language and assimilated as accepted value They will becoht Retroaction froe and back to action entails progressive fine-tuning, never-ending in fact, since hue

Mediations lead to segmentation The coordination of rality (wholeness) of the hu in the output of the practical experience

Mediations, although coordinated by language or other ration in the outcome of activity, introduce elements of tension, which in turn require new ressive specialization When the sequence of ration can easily exceed the degree of coher than that of direct action or of low levels of labor division With each newconstitutes a body of practical knowledge that can be used again and again The necessary integrative di entities, along with the appropriate coordinationOne can speak of mediation between rational and ee, language and inification Regardless of its particular aspect, ration and coordination revisited

From the entire subject of mediation, two questions see of literacy and of its dynamics: 1

Why, at a certain moment in hu instrue's n systems? Let us answer the questions in the order they are posed

Language is not the only iven so far, other estures, objects (stones, twigs, bones, artifacts) were mentioned Also mentioned was the fact that these are quite close to what they actually refer to (as indexical signs), or to what they depict based on a relation of sins) However, even at this level of reduced generality and lis can express themselves beyond the is of the Paleolithic age should be ain in this respect The immediate is the cave itself It is shelter, and its physical characteristics are perceived in direct relation to its function The surprise co how these characteristics beco what is not present by involving a s are coes of the stone walls of the cave This is not a way of speaking A better quality photograph, not to s in the caves, reveals how the lines of the relief are extended into the drawing and e of infor people is comparison, focused on similarities, then on differences We infer fro ashelter in the cave noticed how a certain natural configuration-cloud, plant, rock formation, the trail left by erosion-looked like the head or tail of an animal, or like the human head, for example

The completion of this look-alike form-when such a completion was physically possible-was an instance of practical self-definition and of shared experience When the act of completion was physically perfor, the immediate natural (the cave) was appropriated for a new function, soalleries in the Altaies to the male-female distinction, a sexual identifier but also a first step towards distinctions based on perceived differences The selection of a certain cave fro others was the result of an effort, no ether, this selected physical structure and the added ele a very limited universe of existence and its shared distinctions Further on, the anins (identification of eneral notions such as hand, wound, or different aniht about the world, that is, about the liyptian pictographic writing, we know that i devices in such sophisticated instances as the burial of pharaohs and in their life after death In the universe of ideographic languages (such as Chinese and japanese), thethe written is different Coly, self-constitution in language takes over experiences of co different froredients In some ways, the added efficiency facilitated by mented by formal qualities that would eventually establish the realm of aesthetic practical experiences This should come as no surprise, since we know from many practical experiences or the reher functionality

Language use, which opened access to generality and abstraction, allowed hue of information in the structure of social relations, and to participate in the conventions of social life There is not only the trace of the immediate experience in a word, there is also the shared convention of e, in its development over time, is thus a very difficult-to-decode dynamic history of common praxis We understand this from the way the use of the ax,with the appropriate vocabulary and linguistic expression, from the universe of the Semites to the Indo-Europeans Reconstructed vocabulary frodom testifies to the landscape (there are uished various species), to animals (leopard, lion, monkey), and to tools (wheel- based e is not only a reflection of the past, but also a prograe eed (in China, Africa, southeastern Europe) were also centers of disse, even when it only records the past, does it for the future Progress in writing resulted in better histories, but moreover in new avenues for future praxis In the ideal of literacy, the individual states a progra scope in a social reality of diverse oals Literacy as such is an insertion between a rather co the eneric code which facilitates dialogue a coes Its scope is multidimensional Its condition is one ofelement in the rationale of industrial society, literacy fulfilled the function of a coordinating e, along the assembly line, for instance Obviously conceived on the linear, sequential e, the assembly line optiration Once the reductionist practice of dividing work into smaller, specialized activities becarated in the final product At the level of technology of industrial society, literacy-based human practical experiences of self-constitution defined the scope and character of labor division, specialization, integration, and coordination

Life after literacy

The answer to the second question posed a few pages back is not an exercise in prophecy (I'll leave that to the priests of futurology) This is why the question concerns circuuage can be assu target because today the notion of literacy is a changing representation of expectations and requirements We know that there is a before to literacy; and this before pertains to mediations closer to the natural human condition Of course, we can, and should, ask whether there is an after, and what its characteristics ht be Coher efficiency explain, at least partially, complexities of interhuration

What this first assessment somehow misses is the fact that, from a certain moment on, mediation becomes an activity in itself

Means become an end in themselves When individuals constituted themselves in structurally very sih the insertion of rather hoeneous objects, such as arrows, bows, levers, and tools for cutting and piercing

Interaction was a e resulted in the context of diversification of practical hue captured the permanence and the perspective of the whole into which variously ether Later on, literacy freed hu capabilities relied on space and ti time and interiorized by literate societies

Characteristics of writing specific to different notational systems resulted from characteristics of practical experiences

Literacy only indirectly reflects the encoding of experience in a medium of expression and communication Moreover, the shi+ft from a literacy-dominated civilization to one of partial literacies involves the encoding of the experience in er appropriate for literate expression We write to tape or to digital storage We publish on networks We convert texts into machine- readable forurations or on mixed data types (that constitute multimedia) Experiences encoded in such media reflect their own characteristics in what is expressed and how it is expressed

Although there are vast qualitative differences in linguistic perforuage reified in the technology of literacy-is established

The expectation is a ration requireion, politics, literature, and the ability to communicate and comprehend communication But as literacy becae became a tool-at least in soe becareater political activity in classical Greece and Rome, the practical experience of rhetoric was a discipline in itself Orators, skilled in persuasion, for which language is necessary, e use The written texts of the Middle Ages were also intended to foster the rhetorical skills of the clergy in presenting arguhostwriters have becoe professionals, and so have priests, prophets, and evangelists (of all religions)