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The Consequences of Literacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Jack Goody  and
Ian Watt
Jack Goody
Affiliation:
St. John's College, Cambridge
Ian Watt
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

The accepted tripartite divisions of the formal study both of mankind's past and present are to a considerable extent based on man's development first of language and later of writing. Looked at in the perspective of time, man's biological evolution shades into prehistory when he becomes a language-using animal; add writing, and history proper begins. Looked at in a temporal perspective, man as animal is studied primarily by the zoologist, man as talking animal primarily by the anthropologist, and man as talking and writing animal primarily by the sociologist.

Type
Literacy and Society
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , April 1963 , pp. 304 - 345
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1963

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References

1 Some writers distinguish the field of Social Anthropology from that of Sociology on the basis of its subject matter (i.e. the study of non-literate or non-European peoples), others on the basis of its techniques (e.g. that of participant observation). For a discussion of these points, see Nadel, Siegfried F., The Foundations of Social Anthropology (London, 1951), p. 2.Google Scholar

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14 Jack Goody, unpublished field notes, 1956–7; the heads of the divisions who could not succeed to the paramountcy also claimed descent from sons of the founding ancestor, Jakpa, but this was not an intrinsic part of the myth as usually told, and in any case their number remained constant during the period in question.

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21 Gelb, , Study of Writing, p. 115;Google ScholarDiringer, David, The Alphabet: A Key to the History of Mankind (New York, 1948), pp. 48, 196.Google Scholar

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25 cit. Childe, V. Gordon, Man Makes Himself (London, 1941), pp. 187–8;Google Scholar see also What Happened in History (London, 1942), pp. 105, 118.Google Scholar

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27 Many authorities have commented upon the lack of development in Egypt after the initial achievements of the Old Kingdom: for a discussion (and a contrary view), see Wilson, John A. in Before Philosophy, ed. Frankfort, H. and others (London, 1949), pp. 115–16Google Scholar [pub. in U.S.A. as The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (Chicago, 1946)].Google Scholar

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29 Gelb, , Study of Writing, p. 196, maintains that all the main types of syllabary developed in just this way. Driver rejects the possibility that the Phoenician alphabet was invented on Egyptian soil, as it would have been “stifled at birth” by the “deadweight of Egyptian tradition, already of hoary antiquity and in the hands of a powerful priesthood” (Semitic Writing, p. 187).Google Scholar

30 “Immensely complicated”, Driver calls the pre-alphabetic forms of writing Semitic (Semitic Writing, p. 67).

31 For Hittite, see Gurney, O. R., The Hittites (London, 1952), pp. 120–21.Google Scholar For Mycenean, see Chadwick, John, The Decipherment of Linear B (Cambridge, 1958).Google Scholar

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33 As is exhaustively documented in Diringer, David, The Alphabet, A Key to the History of Mankind (New York, 1948).Google Scholar

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35 According to Turner, Ralph E., The Great Cultural Traditions (New York, 1941), I, pp. 346, 391, the Hebrews took over the Semitic system in the eleventh century B.C., and the Indians a good deal later, probably in the eighth century B.C.Google Scholar

35 Gandz, “Oral Tradition in the Bible”, pp. 253–4.

37 e.g. Luke, 20; Matthew, 23; in the 7th century B.C., even kings and prophets employed scribes, Jer. xxxvi, 4, 18.

38 Driver, Semitic Writing, pp. 87–90, where he instances the case of one scribe who having no son “taught his wisdom to his sister's son”.

39 “If the alphabet is defined as a system of signs expressing single sounds of speech, then the first alphabet which can justifiably be so called is the Greek alphabet”. Gelb, , Study of Writing, p. 166.Google Scholar

39a I. Kings 17, iv-vi; see A Dictionary of the Bible… ed. Hastings, James (New York, 1898–1904), s.v. “Elijah”.Google Scholar

40 810 a. From the ages 10 to 13.

41 L' Adoption universelle des caracteres latins (Paris, 1934);Google Scholar for more recent developments and documentation, see Gray, William S., The Teaching of Reading and Writing: An International Survey, Unesco Monographs on Fundamental Education X (Paris, 1956), especially pp. 31–60.Google Scholar

42 Starr, Chester G., The Origins of Greek Civilization (New York, 1961), pp. 189–190, 349 ff.Google Scholar

43 Starr, , The Origins of Greek Civilization, pp. 87–88, 357.Google Scholar

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46 Chester Starr speaks of its use by “a relatively large aristocratic class” (p. 171) and Miss Jeffery notes that “writing was never regarded as an esoteric craft in early Greece. Ordinary people could and did learn to write, for many of the earliest inscriptions which we possess are casual graffiti” (p. 63).

47 Kenyton, Frederic G., Books and Readers in Ancient Greece and Rome (2nd ed., Oxford, 1951), p. 67.Google Scholar

48 Carcopino, Jérôme, L' Ostracisme athénien (Paris, 1935), pp. 72–110.Google Scholar

49 Protagoras, 325 d.

50 1. 1114; in 414 B.C. See also Plato, Apology, 26 d, and the general survey of Kenyon, Books and Readers in Ancient Greece and Rome.

51 The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven, 1955), II, p. xiii;Google Scholar and An Essay on Man (New York, 1953), especially pp. 106–130,Google Scholar 281–3. For Jaeger, Werner, see especially The Theology of The Early Greek Philosophers (Oxford, 1947).Google Scholar

52 “Magic, Science and Religion” in Science, Religion and Reality, ed. Needham, Joseph (New York, 1925),Google Scholar reprinted Magic, Science and Religion (New York, 1954), p. 27.Google Scholar For an appreciation of Lévy-Bruhl's positive achievement, see Evans-Pritchard, , “LévyBruhl's Theory of Primitive Mentality”, Bulletin of the Faculty of Arts, University of Egypt, 2 (1934), pp. 1–36. In his later work, Lévy-Bruhl modified the rigidity of his earlier dichotomy.Google Scholar

53 Witchcraft, , Oracles and Magic Among the Azande (Oxford, 1937).Google Scholar See also Gluckman's, Max essay, “Social Beliefs and Individual Thinking in Primitive Society”, Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, 91 (1949–1950), pp. 73–98. From a rather different standpoint, Lévi-Strauss has analysed “the logic of totemic classifications” (La Pensée sauvage, p. 48 ff.) and speaks of two distinct modes of scientific thought; the first (or “primitive”) variety consists in “the science of the concrete”, the practical knowledge of the handy man (bricoleur), which is the technical counterpart of mythical thought (p. 26).Google Scholar

54 e.g. the Trobriands (Malinowski, , Myth in Primitive Psychology, pp. 33ff).Google Scholar

55 Jeffery, , The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece, p. 46.Google Scholar

55 “It was in Ionia that the first completely rationalistic attempts to describe the nature of the world took place” [Kirk, G. S. and Raven, J. E., The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1957), p. 73]. The work of the Milesian philosophers, Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, is described by the authors as “clearly a development of the genetic or genealogical approach to nature exemplified by the Hesiodic Theogony” (p. 73).Google Scholar

57 Jacoby, F., Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker, Vol. I, Genealogie and Mythographie (Berlin, 1923), fr. 1.a.Google Scholar

58 Reflections on Violence, trans. Hulme, T. E. (New York, 1941), p. 136;Google Scholarcit. Redfield, Robert, The Primitive World and its Transformations (Ithaca, New York, 1953), p. 125.Google Scholar

59 cit. Hone, Joseph, W. B. Yeats (London, 1942), p. 405 (our italics).Google Scholar

60 Diels, Hermann, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin, 1951), fr. 11, 23;Google Scholar see also Burnet, John, Early Greek Philosophy (2nd ed.London, 1908), pp. 131,Google Scholar 140–141, and Jaeger, Werner, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (Oxford, 1947), pp. 42–7;Google ScholarKirk, and Raven, , The Presocratic Philosophers, pp. 163 ff.Google Scholar

61 Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, fr. 40, 42, 56, 57, 106; see also Cornford, Francis M., Principium Sapientiae: The Origins of Greek Philosophical Thought (Cambridge, 1952), pp. 112 ff.;Google ScholarKirk, and Raven, , The Presocratic Philosophers, pp. 182 ff.Google Scholar

62 Cornford, Francis M., Greek Religious Thought from Homer to the Age of Alexander (London, 1923), xv–xvi.Google Scholar See also Burnet, , Early Greek Philosophy, p. 1.Google Scholar

63 1st Olympian Ode.

64 See Warmington, Eric H., Greek Geography (London, 1934), pp. xiv, xxxviii.Google Scholar

65 History, 4, 36–40.

66 Warmington, , Greek Geography, pp. xvii–xviii, xli ff.Google Scholar

67 Cit. Pearson, Lionel, Early Ionian Historians (Oxford, 1939), p. 3.Google Scholar

68 Jacoby, Felix, A tthis (Oxford, 1949), p. 354.Google Scholar

68 History, I, 1, See also Finley, Moses I. (ed.), The Greek Historians (New York, 1959), pp. 4 ff.Google Scholar

70 See Pearson, , Early Ionian Historians, pp. 152–233, especially pp. 193, 232–33.Google Scholar

71 See, for instance, Malinowski, Bronislaw, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (London, 1922), pp. 290–333.Google Scholar

72 Thucydides, History, I, 20–22, 97. For a picture of note-taking (hypomnemata) among Athenians, see Theaetetus, 142 c–143 c.

73 Felix Jacoby notes that “fixation in writing, once achieved, primarily had a preserving effect upon the oral tradition, because it put an end to the involuntary shiftings of the mnemai (remembrances), and drew limits to the arbitrary creation of new logoi (stories)” (Atthis, 1949, p. 217). He points out that this created difficulties for the early literate recorders of the past which the previous oral mnemones or professional “remembrancers” did not have to face: whatever his own personal view of the matter, “no true Atthidographer could remove Kekrops from his position as the first Attic king… Nobody could take away from Solon the legislation which founded in nuce the first Attic constitution of historical times.” Such things could no longer be silently forgotten, as in an oral tradition.

The general conclusion of Jacoby's polemic against Wilamowitz's hypothesis of a “pre-literary chronicle” is that “historical consciousness… is not older than historical literature” (p. 201).

74 As writers on the indigenous political systems of Africa have insisted, changes generally take the form of rebellion rather than revolution; subjects reject the King, but not the kingship. See Evans-Pritchard, , The Divine Kingship of the Shilluk of the Nilotic Sudan (The Frazer lecture, Cambridge, 1948), pp. 35ff;Google ScholarGluckman, Max, Rituals of Rebellion in South-East Africa (The Frazer lecture, 1952), Manchester, 1954.Google Scholar

75 See Marrou, Henri-Irénée, Histoire de l'éducation dans l'antiquité (Paris, 1948), pp. 76–7, 84–6, 94,, 139–142, 150–2.Google Scholar

76 Protagoras, 313 e.

77 259 e; 274–275. From Hackforth's, Reginald translation in his Plato's Phaedrus (Cambridge, 1952).Google Scholar

78 A great deal of relevant information, and a wealth of further references, are given in the valuable article by Notopoulos, James A., “Mnemosyne in Oral Literature,” Transactions of the American Philological Association, 69 (1938), pp. 465–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

79 Phaedrus, 276 a.

80 341 c-d. [trans. Bluck, R.S., Plato's Life and Thought (London, 1949)].Google Scholar

81 Phaedrus, 275 d; 277 c; 275 c.

82 For a modern example, see David-Neel, Alexandra and Yongden, Lama, The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects (Calcutta, 1959).Google Scholar

83 See especially Greene, William Chase, “The Spoken and the Written Word”, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 60 (1951), pp. 23–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

84 606 e [Jaeger, , Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers, pp. 42,Google Scholar 211]. See also Cornford, , Principium Sapientiae, pp. 154–5.Google Scholar

85 Memorabilia, i, 6, 16. See also Phaedo, 98–99; Phaedrus, 230 d–e.

88 Platon (Berlin, 1919), I, 389.Google Scholar

87 See especially Plato's Laws 793 a–c. Plato is shown to represent both the old veneration and the new distrust of Homer in Apfel's, H. V. “Homeric Criticism in the Fourth Century B.C.”, Transactions of the American Philological Association, 69 (1938), p. 247.Google Scholar

88 264 c; 265 d-266 b; 277 b–c.

89 The Decline of the West, trans. Atkinson, C. F. (New York, 1934), II, p. 149.Google Scholar

90 Statesman, 278. See also Cratylus, 424 b–428 c.

90a Theaetetus, 201–202. The analogy is continued to the end of the dialogue.

91 184 b. There were, of course, many precursors, not only Plato and his laws of the dialectic but the Sophists and grammarians with their semantic interests (see Sandys, John Edwin, A History of Classical Scholarship (Cambridge, 1921), I, pp. 27, 88 ff).Google Scholar

92 Jaeger, , Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers, pp. 4–5.Google Scholar

93 This question is discussed in greater detail by Goody, Jack in “Religion and Ritual: the Definitional Problem”, British Journal of Sociology, 12 (1961), pp. 142–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

94 See, for example, Taylor, Alfred E., Aristotle (London, 1943), pp. 24–39.Google Scholar

95 Geography, 608–9, cit. Sandys, , History of Classical Scholarship, I, p. 86.Google Scholar See also ibid., pp. 76–114 and Thompson, James Westfall, Ancient Libraries (Berkeley, 1940), pp. 18–21.Google Scholar

96 Decline of the West, II, 150.

97 Autobiography of John Stuart Mill, ed. Coss, John J. (New York, 1924), p. 74.Google Scholar

98 Cit. Innis, Harold A., “Minerva's Owl”, The Bias of Communication (Toronto, 1951), p. 24.Google Scholar Harold Innis was much occupied with the larger effects of modes of communication, as appears also in his Empire and Communications (Oxford, 1950).Google Scholar This direction of investigation has been taken up by the University of Toronto review Explorations; and the present authors are also indebted to the as yet unpublished work of Professor E. A. Havelock on the alphabetic revolution in Greece. Among the many previous writers who have been concerned with the Greek aspect of the problem, Nietzsche, [Beyond Good and Evil (Edinburgh, 1909), p. 247],Google Scholar and Gasset, José Ortega y [”The Difficulty of Reading”, Diogenes, 28 (1959), pp. 1–17]CrossRefGoogle Scholar may be mentioned. Among those who have treated the differences between oral and literate modes of communication in general, Reisman, David [“The Oral and Written Traditions”, Explorations, 6 (1956), pp. 22–28,Google Scholar and The Oral Tradition, the Written Word and the Screen Image (Yellow Springs, Ohio, 1956)] and Park, Robert [“Reflections on Communication and Culture”, American J. of Sociology, 44 (1938), pp. 187–205] are especially relevant here.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

99 Gulliver's Travels, Part IV, ch. 9, ed. Case, Arthur E. (New York, 1938), p. 296.Google Scholar

100 “The Use and Abuse of History”, Thoughts out of Season, trans. Collins, Adrian (Edinburgh, 1909), pp. 33, 9.Google Scholar

101 Chan Kom, a Maya Village (Washington, D.C., 1934);Google ScholarThe Folk Culture of Yucatan (Chicago, 1941);Google ScholarA Village that Chose Progress: Chan Kom Revised (Chicago, 1950);Google Scholar and for a more general treatment, The Primitive World and its Transformations (Ithaca, New York, 1953), pp. 73,Google Scholar 108. See also Worsley, Peter, The Trumpet Shall Sound (London, 1957).Google Scholar For the concept of anomie, see Durkheim, Émile, Le Suicide (Paris, 1897), Book II, Ch. V.Google Scholar

102 “Our Educational Emphases in Primitive Perspective”, American Journal of Sociology, 48 (1943), p. 637.Google Scholar

103 Edda and Saga (London, 1931), pp. 162–3.Google Scholar

104 Granet, Marcel, La Pensée chinoise (Paris, 1934), especially pp. vii–xi,Google Scholar 8–55; see also Shih, Hu, The Development of the Logical Method in Ancient China (Shanghai, 1922).Google Scholar

105 Cit. Richards, I. A., Mencius on the Mind (London, 1932), p. 35.Google Scholar

106 Autobiographies (London, 1955), p. 194.Google Scholar

107 Tolstoy, Leo, War and Peace, trans. Louise, and Maude, Aylmer (New York, 1942), pp. 1078–9.Google Scholar

108 Radin, Paul, Crashing Thunder: the Autobiography of an American Indian (New York, 1926),Google Scholar and Primitive Man as Philosopher (New York, 1927).Google Scholar

109 Smith, Mary F., Baba of Karo, a Woman of the Muslim Hausa (London, 1954).Google Scholar

110 Durkheim, Émile, The Division of Labor in Society, trans. Simpson, G. (New York, 1933), p. 130.Google Scholar

111 In the Theaetetus, for example, emphasis is placed on the inner dialogue of the soul in which it perceives ethical ideas “by comparing within herself things past and present with the future” (186 b).

112 Jaeger, , Paideia (Oxford, 1944), II, 18, speaks of the dialogues and the memoirs by many members of the circle of Socrates as “new literary forms invented by the Socratic circle… to re-create the incomparable personality of the master.”Google Scholar

113 Just as it has been argued that a proper understanding of Homer depends upon a “non-Aristotelian literary criticism” which is appropriate to oral literature: Notopoulos, James A., “Parataxis in Homer: a New Approach to Homeric Literary Criticism”, Transactions of the American Philological Association, 80 (1949), pp. 1, 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

114 “Codifications of Reality: Lineal and Nonlineal”, in Freedom and Culture (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1959), pp. 105–120;Google Scholar see also her “Conceptual Implications of an Indian Language”, Philosophy of Science, 5 (1938), pp. 89–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

115 “Languages and Logic”, Technological Review, 43 (1941),Google Scholar reprinted in Language, Thought, and Reality, Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf (New York, 1956), p. 238.Google Scholar

116 “The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language”, Language, Culture, and Personality, Essays in Memory of Edward Sapir, ed. by Spier, Leslie (Menasha, Wis., 1941), reprinted in Language, Thought, and Reality, p. 153.Google Scholar

117 op. cit. p. 153.

118 For example in his paper “A linguistic consideration of thinking in primitive communities” (Language, Thought and Reality, pp. 65–86), Whorf discusses Lévy-Bruhl's account of the thinking of primitive man as characterized by participation mystique, and suggests that the differences are related to the structure of language. No mention is made of the role of writing and he seems to see language itself as the independent variable, although in his later paper on “Habitual thought”, he does make a passing reference to writing, as well as to the interdependence of language and culture (p. 153). Lévi-Strauss, who is much concerned with the linguistic aspects of the problem, makes no mention of the role of literacy in his analysis of the differences between la pensée sauvage and la pensée domestiquée, but again the actual process of domestication is peripheral to his study (1962).

119 Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book IV, ch. 17, 84.

120 From Max Weber; Essays in Sociology, trans. Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright (New York, 1946), pp. 298–9.Google Scholar See also The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation, trans. Henderson, A. M. and Parsons, Talcott (New York, 1947), pp. 184–6.Google Scholar

121 Especially in the “Author's Introduction” to The Protestant Ethic, trans. Parsons, Talcott (London, 1930), pp. 13–31, where Weber gives a rapid but comprehensive survey of the problem of “what combination of circumstances” made some aspects of Western civilization “lie in a line of development having universal significance and value”. See also his lecture “Science as a Vocation” (From Max Weber, especially pp. 138–143).Google Scholar

122 The authors are much indebted to John Beattie, Glyn Daniel, Lloyd Fallers, Moses Finley, Joseph Fontenrose, Harry Hoijer, the late Alfred Kroeber, Simon Pembroke and Nur Yalman for reading and commenting upon earlier versions of this paper. They are also grateful to the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, California, for the opportunity of working together on the manuscript in Spring, 1960.