to be training in the use of written English ... Spoken language is
taken for granted. As a result of this constant emphasis on written
language, there is an understandable tendency for people to believe
that writing is somehow more complicated and difficult (and more
important) than speech.
(Milroy and Milroy 1999: 55)This preoccupation with the written language to the exclusion of the
spoken is quite easy to document. The National Association of Teachers of
English, for example, publishes guidelines for the curriculum in English
on a regular basis; of the twelve points addressed, only four include
mention of spoken language skills, and then in a very vague and indirect
way (a topic which will be taken up in more detail in Chapter 7).
From the spoken to the written language is a large step; it is another
significant step from the written language to the possession of literacy.^18
However, the possession of a skill and the facility to use that skill to
construct a product are cultural resources not equally available to all
persons, and are heavily laden with social currencies. In the U.S., most
people do not consider oral cultures as equal to literate ones. Some
scholars have argued, with differing degrees of subtlety, that certain kinds
or modes of thought cannot develop in oral cultures, and that for this
reason literate cultures are superior.
This type of argument has come under attack on both methodological
and theoretical grounds. One of the oldest but still most comprehensive
examples of such tortured reasoning is Bernstein’s (1966) theory of
restricted and elaborated codes.^19 Bernstein attempted (and failed) to
establish that children who spoke “elaborated” languages at home (he
called those languages syntactically complex) were more capable of
logical thought and other cognitive advantages, and that children who
heard only restricted codes in the home were at a disadvantage.^20
It is demonstrably true that in a literate culture, illiteracy is a social
brand like few others. Cameron calls what goes on around the written
language a circle of intimidation:
[M]astering a complex and difficult craft gives you an inbuilt
incentive to defend its practices. If I have invested time and effort
learning how to write according to a particular set of prescriptions, it