CONCLUSION
I have attempted to show that writing is neither equivalent to speaking
nor is it an utterly unique and distinctive mode of communication.
Rather, writing may be thought of as a subclass of speech, specifically
that of quotation, a move that allows one to separate the force or attitude
of an utterance from the propositional content it expresses. Conse-
quently, writing calls for a distinctive mode of interpretation. Writing
exploits the recursive property of language, the property that allows
language to be used to reflect on language. All speakers of a language
have access to these basic linguistic resources, resources including direct
and indirect quotation. However, in written cultures that rely heavily on
texts and documents, the familiarity and competence with reflexive, or
quoted, language is greatly elaborated. Stated another way, literate people
in literate societies have developed expertise in dealing with a special class
of expressions, expressions that are mentioned rather than used, and so
fall into the quoted class. Such texts constitute a major archival resource
in modern document-based societies and in learning to cope with them
people acquire a distinctive kind of social competence not inappropriately
described as literacy.
Reading and writing are now seen as embedded in social practices as
law, economics, literature, and religion, as well as in more local literacy
practices such as Internet blogs and reading groups. The more formal
social practices tend to exploit the distinctive access that writing gives
to metalinguistic knowledge, the technical and precise meanings of terms
and expressions. Conversely, altered social practices give rise to new ways
of writing and reading. But it is the consciousness of words and meanings
stripped of their illocutionary force, the so-called timeless meanings of
formal discourse, on the one hand, and the free play of subjectivities
divorced from those timeless meanings, on the other, that make writing
so important to modern thought and to the development of a literate
tradition.
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