Ancient Literacies

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1

referring to the evident necessity for orators and sophists to write the


spoken and to speak the written.


Nor am I going to focus on the oppressive nature of Atticism. In modern


literacy studies, particularly in the last fifteen years or so, there has been a


great deal of work on the potentially oppressive nature of literacy training


in Western schools.^7 This research is aimed at explaining why certain


groups, ethnic minorities in the main, in so-called advanced and wealthy


urban environments appear to be repeatedly disadvantaged in schools. It


has explored how verbal patterns in, say, black or Hispanic use of English


are not recognized in the classroom, and how certain patterns of social


behavior in black culture—not asking children questions, for example, or,


more importantly, not expecting answers to be given by children to non-


family members—disadvantages them when they enter an environment


where answering questions promptly is at a premium.
8


Although some of this research seems to me to have some awkward


political manipulation in it, it is useful for reminding us how we could


look at the strange and forced world of Second Sophistic linguistic perfor-


mance. Although scholars continue to argue with great ferocity about levels
of Atticism in this or that piece of late prose,^9 we should not allow


such discussion to obscure the sociopolitical impact of what appears


to have become a linguistic environment imbued with an aggressive and


self-aware scrutiny. Plutarch tells us firmly that we should accustom our-


selves to shout out ‘‘No! Error!’’ if we hear a mistake of pronunciation or


grammar in conversation.^10 Lucian records with a more self-deprecating


irony how he had used the wrong word one morning when greeting


his patron at thesalutatio. ‘‘I began to sweat and went pink with embarrass-


ment, and was all over the shop in my confusion. Some of those present


thought I had made an error, naturally enough; others that I was babbling


from age; others thought it was a hangover from yesterday’s wine-drink-


ing.’’^11 Lucian captures with amusing poignancy the shame of a public


verbal slip in the presence of his patron, without even a Plutarch to correct


him loudly.


Literacy, in the form of the carefully trained and practiced world of


Attic speech, constantly polices the boundary of verbal performance. The


performance of oral speech is regulated and ordered by the institutions of


literacy in the Second Sophistic as much as in the secondary schools


of America. There is a continuity between Plutarch’s essays on ‘‘How to


listen to lectures,’’ ‘‘On garrulousness,’’ ‘‘How a young man should listen


to poetry,’’ ‘‘How to tell a flatterer from a friend,’’ and Philostratus’s



  1. Good summary of this in Collins and Blot 2003 with extensive bibliography.

  2. See Heath 1983.

  3. See the useful work of Swain 1996.
    10.How to Study Poetry26b.

  4. Lucianpro lapsu(64).1.


The Anecdote 99

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