literacy from a linguistic and a sociolinguistic perspective

Literacy from a Linguistic and a Sociolinguistic PerspectiveAuthor(s): Abdallah Hady Al-KahtanySource: International Review of Education / Internationale Zeitschrift fürErziehungswissenschaft / Revue Internationale de l'Education, Vol. 42, No. 6 (1996), pp. 547-562Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3445006 .

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LITERACY FROM A LINGUISTIC AND A SOCIOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE

ABDALLAH HADY AL-KAHTANY

Abstract - This paper examines the impact of two major approaches to literacy programs - the linguistic and the sociolinguistic. The principal difference between the two perspectives is that the linguistic negates the importance of sociological and ethnographic factors in a person's attaining literacy, while the sociolinguistic magni- fies these influences. From one viewpoint, literacy is seen as cracking a linguistic code, while from the other, in Freire's (1987) phrasing, "reading the world" is necessary before "reading the word". Academic/cultural literacy and functional literacy are examined as types affiliated with the linguistic perspective. Types of ethnographic literacy programs are analyzed to show their sociolinguistic orientation. The last section of the paper examines the language planning consequences of which perspective a country adopts and focuses on some recent literacy programs in Peru which incorporate elements of both the linguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives.

Zusammenfassung - Dieser Artikel untersucht den EinfluB zweier AnsStze zu Alphabetisierungsprogrammen - den linguistischen und den soziolinguistischen. Der Hauptunterschied zwischen beiden Perspektiven liegt darin, daB die linguistische die Bedeutung soziologischer und ethnologischer Faktoren beim lernen vereint, wahrend die soziolinguistische Perspektive diese Einflisse unterstreicht. Eine Seite versteht unter Lese- und Schreibfahigkeit die L6sung eines linguistischen Codes, wahrend die andere Seite mit Freires (1987) Worten gesprochen, "Lesen der Welt" in seiner Wichtigkeit vor "Lesen des Wortes" stellt Akademische/kulturelle Schreib- u. Lesefahigkeit und funktionelle Schreib- u. Lesefiahigkeit werden als Beispiele untersucht, die eng mit der linguistischen Perspektive verbunden sind. Ethnogra- phische Alphabetisierungsprogamme werden in ihrer soziolinguistischen Orientierung analysiert Der letzte Teil des Artikels setzt sich mit den Folgen fur Sprachprogramme auseinander, in Bezug zur eingenommenen Perspektive. Der Artikel konzentriert sich auf einige Alphabetisierungsprogramme in Peru, die beide Perspektiven ein- beziehen.

Resumd - Cet article etudie l'incidence des deux principaux modes d'approche des programmes d'alphab6tistion, l'un linguistique et l'autre sociolinguistique. La diff6rence principale entre ces deux perspectives est la suivante: La linguistique nie l'importance des facteurs sociologiques et ethnographiques dans le processus d'alphab6tisation d'une personne, alors que la sociolinguistique amplifie ces facteurs d'influence. La premiere considere l'alphab6tisation comme le d6cryptage d'un code linguistique, pour la seconde, selon l'expression de Freire (1987), il faut "lire le monde" avant de "lire le mot". Les formes d'alphab6tisation dites acad6mique, culturelle et fonctionnelle sont pr6sent6es comme appartenant A l'optique linguistique. Des programmes d'alphab6tisation ethnographique sont 6galement examin6s pour en montrer l'orientation sociolinguistique. La dernitre partie de l'article analyse les cons6quences sur la planification linguistique quand un pays adopte l'une ou l'autre conception, et termine par la presentation de quelques r6cents programmes d'alphab6ti- sation au P6rou, qui int6grent des 616ments i la fois linguistiques et sociolinguistiques.

International Review of Education - Internationale Zeitschrift fir Erziehungswissenschaft - Revue Internationale de l'Education 42(6): 547-562, 1996. 0 1996 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.



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Resumen - El trabajo examina el impacto de dos importantes enfoques de programas de alfabetizaci6n: el lingOiistico y el sociolingilistico. La principal diferencia entre ambas 6pticas reside en que la lingOistica niega la importancia que revisten los factores sociol6gicos y etnogrificos para la persona que estA aprendiendo a leer y a escribir, mientras que la sociolingflistica magnifica estas influencias. Desde un punto de vista, la alfabetizaci6n es considerada como la soluci6n del c6digo lingtiistico, mientras que desde el otro, seg6in las palabras de Freire (1987), se sostiene que antes de "reading" the word" (leer la palabra) serb necesario "reading the world" (interpretar el mundo). Estudia la alfabetizaci6n acad6mico-cultural y la alfabetizaci6n funcional como disciplinas asociadas a la 6ptica de la lingfiSstica. Analiza tipos de programas etnogfificos de alfabetizaci6n para mostrar su orientaci6n socioling(iistca. La filtima parte del trabajo examina las consecuencias de is planificaci6n del lenguaje segOn la perspectiva que un pals adopts, y enfoca algunos programas de alfabetizaci6n recientes del Pernu, que incorporan elementos tanto de la 6ptica lingiuistics como de la sociolingilistic.

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Literacy has traditionally been defined from a linguistic perspective. From this point of view, becoming literate is "a mechanical process" involving "the technical acquisition of reading and writing skills", as Freire and Macedo (I987: viii) term it, in disparagement of the limitation of this approach. In

achieving literacy, a person is successful in crossing the linguistic "Great Divide" (Bizzell 1988; Street 1984), going from Point A, the ability to use a language orally (phonemically), to Point B, being able to code and decode this language in print (graphemically). The transition from "orality" to

"literacy" occurs through mastering a linguistic system - for instance, an



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alphabet - and thus change from oral thinking to literate thinking is achieved solely through acquisition of alphabetic literacy (Finnegan 1981; Goody 1977; Goddy and Watt 1963; Olson 1977).

As Freire (1987: 147) points out, this linguistic approach to literacy has led "to the development of neatly packaged reading programs", emphasizing, "the mechanical learning of reading skills". Focusing on the linguistic perspective turns the learner into a receptacle into which graphemic knowledge is poured by the literacy teacher. An alternative approach views the learner as a spring, sending forth its own distinctive presence. "[T]he life experience, the history, and the language practice of [literacy] students" must be considered in developing a literacy program, Freire (1987: 146) states. From this perspective, attaining literacy becomes more than just cracking a linguistic code. It means regarding language use, whether oral or written, as embedded in a social context which affects both its form and function (Heath 1983; Tannen 1982), that is, viewing language from a sociolinguistic perspective.

What I propose to do is to analyze the consequences of viewing literacy either as a linguistic or as a sociolinguistic event. First, I will examine the literacy theory of those who support the autonomous model, showing that it presents literacy as basically a linguistic phenomenon. Next I will analyze a sociolinguistic approach, what Bizzell (1988) calls the cultural literacy model and Stubbs (1980: 18) terms "the sociolinguistics of literacy". In the final section, I will examine some language planning implications which the principles of each perspective have for literacy programs.

A linguistic approach to literacy

What is often termed alphabetic literacy takes the form of assigning symbols (graphemes) to each of the phonemic sounds of a language rather than to syllables or whole words. Street (1984) calls this approach the "autonomous model" because its proponents perceive the acquisition of literacy as inde- pendent of any social factors; it is purely a linguistic experience. They argue that alphabetic literacy is superior to non-alphabetic systems because fewer symbols are used to represent a greater number of words (Bizzell 1988).

Such a view of literacy has significant epistemological consequences. For instance, Goody and Watt (1963) and Goody (1977) hold the position that literate and illiterate societies differ dramatically in their perception of reality. They associate literacy with logic and objectivity, while linking illiteracy to the illogical and the subjective. Both they and Olson (1977) view literacy as a product of human intelligence that allows literate humans to comprehend abstract concepts. Illiterates, on the other hand, can capture perceptions of only the concrete world limited by face-to-face interaction. To take two examples, from their perspective, illiterate societies can develop only an inaccurate, mythical view of history because only through writing, not oral



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tradition, can historical events be accurately preserved. Furthermore, writing allows small communities to become large complex ones from which scientific thought can emerge.

Central to the autonomous model is a linguistic distinction between the

spoken and written modes of language, and this dichotomy consequently affects cognitive operations and mental practices prevalent in a literate/ illiterate society. Olson (1977) claims that the meaning of written language resides in the text itself, whereas for oral language much meaning is com- municated in the context in which language is used. Thus written language is viewed as more "autonomous" or textualized than spoken language and is

thereby freed of the ambiguities of oral language. Many sentences that are

ambiguous when spoken are unequivocal when written, Olson states. Since science is the discipline which disdains the ambiguous, a literate society will better promote scientific inquiry than a non-literate society, advocates of the autonomous model contend.

Greenfield (1972), another of its proponents, is also concerned with the consequences of literacy/illiteracy on cognition. She proposes that speech, which she views like Olson (1977) as context-dependent, is linked to content-

dependent thought. As a medium, speech does not allow for as great a level of abstraction as writing, abstraction, according to her, being a criterion for the mental separation of an element from the situation or context in which it is embedded. Her argument continues that written language involves a high level of abstraction because if a spoken word stands for something, a written word represents something that stands for something else. Literacy thus must be viewed in "linguistic contexts .... [T]he embedding of a label in a total sentence structure . . . indicates that it is less tied to its situational context and more related to its linguistic context" (Greenfield 1972: 175). Therefore, Greenfield holds that literacy, a solely linguistic phenomenon, is isolated from social factors.

A final example will show the extremes to which proponents of the assumptions of the autonomous model go in stressing that literacy is a linguistic concern. Farrell (1985) argues that the reason native speakers of Black English (BE) often score lower than whites on IQ tests is that BE is an oral linguistic variety, not a literate one. His proposal for curing the problem is to emphasize the acquisition of Standard American English (SAE) by BE speakers. Specifically, they should master the copula, the verb "to have", and other elements of SAE, after which they will be able to think literally and hence

logically, according to Farrell. This conclusion leads to the false assumption that BE speakers are neither literate nor logical.

Implications of a solely linguistic approach to literacy are that literate

people are cognitively superior to non-literate people and that literates view the world more rationally than non-literates. From the autonomous-model perspective, being able to read and write is a manifestation of an ability to rise above concrete, here-and-now reality and to embrace a higher reality, that of abstraction and complex time relationships. Crossing this linguistic "Great



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Divide" will promote scientific and technological advancement and bring "progress" to a previously non-literate society.

The assumptions and suppositions of the autonomous/linguistic approach are open to challenge. Bizzell (1988) states that it is naive to contend that an alphabetic system by itself causes cognitive change or indicates the mental superiority of a literate over a non-literate person. Neither a writing system nor a structurally standardized representation of a language's grammar alters a person's verbal apparatus; this instrument, which is sometimes called the LAD (Language Acquisition Device), allows a child to acquire the oral mode of a language, in all of its complexities, through natural input. With this oral mode in place, the "divide" separating orality from literacy is perhaps not as "great" as advocates of the autonomous model propose.

Tannen (1984) and Beaman (1989) have focused their criticism of this clear-cut division between spoken and written language which is at the heart of the autonomous model. Tannen (1984) contends that complex cognitive processes are involved in both the spoken and written modes, making it dif- ficult to maintain that one is more logical, rational or abstract-oriented than the other. Beaman (1989) similarly argues that both modes have the same cognitive bases. She grounds her contention upon a study of twenty spoken and twenty written narratives designed to measure complexity in both modes. Her findings are that, assuming that subordination implies linguistic complexity, spoken narrative discourse is on the whole just as intricate as the written mode, if not more so, although the types of complexity involved in the two modalities are different. Spoken narrative, as well as written, exhibits a high frequency of adjectival relative clauses. Also, spoken narration shows greater use of restrictive relative clauses, while written narratives more frequently rely on information-bearing relative clauses. Both have their own indigenous complexity, or as Stubbs (1980: 17) writes, "written language clearly serves various functions which spoken language never could and is therefore superior from that point of view. Conversely, written language has clear disadvantages in other situations."

Concerning Greenfield's (1972) contention that written discourse involves abstraction to a greater extent than spoken discourse, Labov (1973) argues that any use of language involves higher-order abstraction. The mere fact of referring to something not present is an abstraction by itself, a separation from the immediate here-and-now context. Furthermore, "deep grammar" (the logic of grammatical rules) is present, whether "surface grammar" reveals itself in speech or in a written text (the terms are Chomsky's 1965). Generative linguistics thus seems to gainsay that "literally" is equivalent to "logically" and that illiteracy equates with illogic, as Farrell (1985) contends. BE is as rule- governed and consistent as SAE, and the utterances of BE speakers which Farrell marked as ungrammatical have nothing to do with the supposed cognitive deprivation of BE speakers. Instead, they are indicative that Farrell is judging one dialect (BE) by the standards of another (SAE) which he more highly values.



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Despite these limitations of the assumptions of the linguistic approach, it

provides the theoretical underpinnings of the two major types of literacy. The first, "academic literacy", is associated with the implementation of a use of the language variety which is highly regarded by the upper social classes and which is consequently valued by academic institutions. Street (1984) refers to this type of literacy as that of the "academic sub-culture" and notes that it is typically attached to the values and norms of the mainstream culture. Thus it expresses the linguistic proclivities of both the upper and middle classes. A recent and controversial manifestation of it is Hirsch's Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (1988), with its statement that "only a few hundred pages of information stand between the [culturally] literate and the [culturally] illiterate" (p. 143).

To be accepted as academically literate, students who come from a non- mainstream culture must go through some kind of acculturation process, often

entailing an admission that their cultural background was "inferior in terms of complexity and value" (Giroux 1983: 146). The promise is held out that the grafting on of what academia has determined is literacy will produce a cultural literate who "possessles] the basic information needed to thrive in the modern world" (Hirsch 1988: xiii; see Grant 1994; Hallpike and Sworder 1994, and O'Keefe 1994, for critical appraisals of Hirsch's cultural literacy). With its emphasis on language mastery and native-culture negation, "literacy in this sense is stripped of its sociopolitical dimensions" (Freire 1987: 146). Illiteracy, conversely, becomes "not merely the inability to read and write", but also "a cultural marker for naming forms of difference within the logic of cultural deprivation theory" (Giroux 1987: 3).

A second type, "functional literacy", refers to the acquisition of sufficient

reading and writing skills to enable a person to participate in community activities (Gray 1956, who coined the term, Levine 1982), that is, to "read and write with understanding a simple statement on his everyday life" (Bowers 1968: 381) or "the ability to read and write well enough to fulfill the duties of family, occupation, and society" (Stubbs 1980: 97). A functionally literate

person is able to perform necessary societal roles: read signs, posters, maps, menus, and advertisements, complete job applications, understand written

directions, etc. (For the relationship between functional literacy skills and basic language skills, see Coombe 1993.) "In general," Freire (1987: 147) writes, this "utilitarian approach views literacy as meeting the basic reading demand of an industrialized society."

While functional literacy would seem to have a societal basis, on closer

inspection it is seen that like academic literacy this type dictates the form and content of literacy. A candidate for literacy is to "function" according to some predetermined standards by mastering literacy criteria often developed with no input from the targeted participant. The learner is still a passive receptacle, having no control over the "literacy" s/he receives. The cultural

background of the learner is negated, resulting in the cloning of predetermined "literates", defined by the linguistic needs of a mainstream group in a



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society/country beyond the targeted community, and certainly not in terms of the individual's needs.

In the next section, I will show how a sociolinguistic perspective of literacy tries to compensate for some of the limitations of the linguistic approach.

A sociolinguistic approach to literacy

A sociolinguistic perspective considers literacy events as practices that should be "interpreted in relation to the larger sociocultural patterns which they may exemplify or reflect" (Heath 1983: 74). "Most of language, "Hudson (1980) concurs, "is contained within culture" (p. 83) and "the way in which a language structures the world, through the meaning which it distinguishes, depends partly on the way in which the world itself is structured and partly on the communicative needs of its speakers" (p. 92). Thus, for sociolinguists, the acquisition of literacy cannot be separated from its social contexts.

The types and features of literacy which a community develops are determined by indigenous elements, such as needs and interests of the learners, socioeconomic stability, gender roles, language status, and local patterns of literate language use, such as self-control strategies, personal and social knowledge, and social experience (Crandall 1991; Derwing and Malicky 1992; Fitzgerald 1994; Pugh 1991; Reyes 1992). This sociolinguistic approach is sometimes called the "ideological model" (Street 1984), and it aims, in the words of the participants in the Third Conference on Literacy in the Arab World, held in Alexandrian Egypt, to "go beyond the limited concept of literacy, to take into account a sociolinguistic approach to solve the problems of illiteracy in the Arab World" (Strategy ... 1990: 153-154).

Its assumptions are often diametrically opposed to those of the linguistic/ autonomous model of literacy. First, it does not view the dichotomy of oral and written language as having cognitive implications. Instead, the modes of language are dealt with according to the different roles each plays in a society. For example, Parry (1982) states that oral traditions continue to dominate the use of text among the Brahmins in India despite the existence of written texts. Brahmin culture emphasizes the spoken word, despite the proliferation of written texts, a finding which would not support Goody's (1977) and Olson's (1977) technological deterministic assertions that the written assumes supremacy over the oral and promotes a lack of ambiguity. As Street (1984: 99) writes, "For traditional India, at least, oral knowledge is resilient while the literature tradition allows for a range of interpretation and spontaneity."

From a sociolinguistic perspective towards literacy, there is not a sharp division between the written and spoken modes; rather there is an interactive continuum of communication (Finnegan 1981). However, Finnegan does not deny that different cultures may put different emphases on one mode or the other, arguing that this underscoring is determined by the needs, purposes, and roles of language in the society. Literacy here becomes less a linguistic



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technology (the view of proponents of the autonomous model) than a cultural form or a social product whose shape and influence depend upon previous ideological and societal factors (Williams 1974). Written texts can not be discerned as a sign of a critical mentality which aims to achieve permanence lacking in oral expression (Clanchy 1979); rather, putting something in written form is a decision by a writer or writers to express in the written text a product of their society's ideology of literacy.

Another sociolinguistic principle which has affected literacy is stated by Gudschinsky (1974: 2040): "Reading and writing can only be taught in a

language that the pupil already speaks." However, this principle is often forgone in the world of realpolitik where the non-social implications of lin-

guistic literacy programs are more attractive and less disturbing. After being asked to set up an adult literacy program in Guinea-Bissau, Freire reported to Macedo (Freire and Macedo 1987: 108-113) his frustration when the country's President insisted that the program be conducted in Portuguese, the

upper-class prestige language not in the language the participants of the

program principally spoke at home, the lingua franca Creole. As persuasive as Freire was, the outcome was predictable: A political decision won out over a sociolinguistic principle. Frequently accompanying such a planning decision about the language of the literacy program is another linguistic decision relating to the materials to be used in the program. As Greene, Royer and Anzalone (1990: 58-59) write, literacy program texts are invariably "import[ed]" and "developed outside the country" where they are to be used, even though such materials "may be inappropriate for use in developing countries due to an insensitivity to the cultural and linguistic experiences of the

population in that country." According to Freire (1987), it is not just the imported literacy materials

which adversely affect such literacy programs. He contends that reading is not merely decoding the written word or language; "rather, it is preceded by and intertwined with knowledge of the world. Language and reality are

dynamically interconnected" (p. 29). He continues that the literacy teacher cannot put together materials for the student; that synthesizing is "the student's creative task" (p. 35). These materials must come from "the 'word universe' of the people who are learning, expressing their actual language, their anxieties, fears, demands, and dreams, . . . words from the people's reading of [their] world" (p. 35). In Freire's literacy programs, the learners are challenged "with a group of codified situations, so they will apprehend the word rather than mechanically memorize it" (p. 36). The linguistic "text" cannot be separated from the "sociohistorical context" (p. 157), a situation which often happens when literacy is viewed solely from a linguistic perspective. Freire's main contribution to a sociolinguistic perspective of

literacy theory can be summed up in the one addition he made to the definition of literacy, a possessive determiner: Literacy means not people being able to read and write words, but people being able to read and write their own words.



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Finally, as touched on above, the sociolinguistic perspective has brought to the fore discussions about the political uses of language. It has shown that as a general rule, a society selects as its "standard" that language variety associated with its most powerful ethnic groups and social classes. The linguistic "registers" within this standard that are most highly esteemed are typically those associated with the more powerful gender (men), with the most powerful age group (adults), and with the economically most powerful class (the rich) (Hughes and Trudgill 1979). For instance, minority dialects, such as BE in the United States, were often ridiculed, and education for black youths was "always away from - not toward - Black culture, language, and community" (Smitherman 1984: 110). To use Freire's (1987) wording, blacks were dis- paraged from "reading their world" except through "reading the word" of the white dominant class.

An extreme application of sociolinguistic principles to literacy, just as an extreme application of linguistic principles, is open to criticism. In their insis- tence that literacy programs be conducted in the language the learners speak, sociolinguists run their risk of further isolating and shackling the learners they want to "liberate" from illiteracy. In such an instance language may function to cut a community off from the economic and educational development of a country. By stressing cultural self-identification as a primary goal of a literacy program, such a sociolinguistic perspective may encourage individuals not to seek to rise above their own environments or even to consider the merits and demerits of the mainstream culture (Eisemon et al. 1989). In such a case, the individual non-literate may be sacrificed in order to assert or manifest a sociolinguistic principle.

Notwithstanding this limitation to the sociolinguistic approach to literacy, its principles have recently had a major impact on literacy programs. While the autonomous model contends that literacy is not affected by social factors and thus is the same regardless of these factors, recent ethnographic studies reveal that the sociolinguistics of literacy have affected the different concep- tualizations of literacy held by modern communities. Two studies in very different communities will be cited. Street's (1984) was within the context of Iranian rural villages, and Heath's (1983) dealt with different social groups in the Piedmont Carolinas in the United States. Both are representative of the major type of literacy advocated by sociolinguists - ethnographic literacy.

Street labeled as "maktab" literacy the type found in the rural Iranian communities of his field study since it developed out of the religious schools or "maktabs", the only educational medium in these communities before the government established public schools in the 1970s. The "maktabs" concen- trated on oral memorization, but taught enough literacy for the young students to read and write some of the Holy Koran and Hadiths. Literacy instruction thus did not go beyond the religious. However, Street was surprised at how the students on their own (that is, without formal instruction) were able to adapt and apply this solely religious literacy to commercial transactions (use of lists, bureaucratic devices, personal notes, labeling, signs, etc.) after they



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matured and became village "tajers" or middlemen in the village fruit trade. "Maktab" literacy became "commercial" literacy, yet Street writes that this transformation "was neither an individual matter nor was it a product of specific formal training" (p. 12).

The "sea change" was an ideological development, "a social construction of reality embedded in collective practice in specific social situations" (p. 12). This "commercial" literacy - prepared for by "maktab" literacy, but not a product of it - similarly prepared the children for a third entirely different type of literacy - "school" literacy, involving textbooks and formal pedagogical instruction - when a state school system came to the Iranian villages with the oil boom of the mid-1970s. "School" literacy, in turn, brought with it new changes in social practices and even the subsequent emergence of new cultural practices.

The villagers were able to make the transition because "maktab" literacy had seemingly ingrained the community with two principles: the theoretical importance of a kind of literacy and the applicability of literacy knowledge in proper contexts to their daily life. These principles were not dictated from above, but the villagers' conceptualization of literacy arose from the changing needs of the community. Al-Saied (1990) finds these healthy theoretical and practical attitudes towards literacy at the bedrock of most Muslim societies and advocates that in tapping them governments go beyond formal literacy programs (which stress that its participants are "illiterate") to continuing education programs (which will build on the "maktab" and "commercial" litera- cies of their participants).

In Heath's (1983) study, the ideological model of literacy was applied to a cultural situation in three proximate US communities in the Piedmont Carolinas. It showed that differences in perceiving literacy and its relation to "reality" stem directly from the influence of ideology in each community. In Roadville, a white working-class community of fourth-generation textile mill workers, adults encouraged their children to use books to lear about the "real world", not about a fantasy world or about a world of personal self- exploration. Parents in Trackton, a black working-class community whose older generations farmed the land, but whose current members work in the mills, encouraged their children to use books to fantasize, and it was their enlargement and transformation that adults looked for in their children's narratives about what they had read. The third community consisted of mainstream white families; mainstream children were encouraged by their parents to use reading to gain a greater understanding of themselves; books were for personal self-exploration, not for examination of the "real world" or for fantasizing. Thus the children of each community went to school with different literacy experiences and views of reality. These divergent ideologies about literate practices, of course, affected the ways the children responded to formal schooling. A conclusion is that even when in close proximity, communities' cultural conventions and needs with respect to the literate process may differ.



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Street's and Heath's studies attest to the impact which sociolinguistic principles have had on the conceptualization of literacy: What is literacy? What is illiteracy, or even more so, can anyone be called illiterate? How does a society use registers of literacy to maintain a mainstream power base and the status quo? Within a narrow community, what influences the literate process? These questions, particularly the ones about a definition of literacy, will be addressed in the next section, which will also suggest some common ground between the two perspectives of literacy.

Conclusion and implications

For almost one hundred years, modem literacy experts have sought agreement on a definition of literacy. By and large, it has been perceived linguistically, "essentially a process of relating written symbols to sound units" (Stubbs 1980: 11). As such, Stubbs continues, literacy students are given materials which are "linguistically organized at different levels, phonological (sound structure), morphological (word structure), syntactic (grammar) and semantic (meaning)" (p. 15). This perspective concentrates on language per se, not on the social uses of language in a literacy program.

More recently, literacy has been considered from a sociolinguistic perspective, basically as a process related to the social uses to which reading and writing are put. As such, a literacy program incorporates "deeply embedded . . . attitudinal, cultural, economic and technological constraints" showing how "people speak, listen, read and write in different social situations for different purposes" (Stubbs 1980: 15). Gudschinsky's (1976: 3) definition of literacy tries to incorporate both perspectives: "That person is literate who, in a language [s]/he speaks, can read with understanding anything [s]he would have understood if it had been spoken to [her/]him; and can write, so that it can be read, anything [s]he can say." However, this definition does not address the issue that economic and social factors may dictate that a person become literate in a language that s/he would not want to speak unless these factors were present.

Thus literacy often cannot be defined solely from a personal perspective, and the decision whether a linguistic or sociolinguistic perspective of literacy will be adopted is one for a country's sociopolitical language planners. A linguistic approach in which a unified literacy program is established to attain national goals such as cohesion across ethnic boundaries and economic targets, and in which local communities' desires and needs are minimally considered, promotes national unity. A sociolinguistic approach, in which a literacy program is tailored to the needs of a community and seeks to promote linguistic diversity, is "of value for preserving cultural differences and main- taining cultural pluralism - the stuff nations and societies are made of" Eastman (1983: 56). Language thus can function as a symbol which allows people to see themselves as part of a larger group or as a symbol which encour- ages them to see themselves as different from others.



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Having decided how language is to be used in a literacy program, language planners then confront the basic needs for a language to be used for literacy. In the following list (modified from Bowers 1968, and Eastman 1983), some of the essentials have a linguistic orientation and others a sociolinguistic:

- An acceptable writing system. If the language in which literacy is sought is unwritten, there must first be a transcription and analysis of its oral version by descriptive linguists, preferably trained in anthropology (principally linguistic).

- Basic literacy materials designed to get the language across as a means of reading and writing. Sociolinguists would advocate that the materials not be imported but that the targeted community be involved in their prepara- tion so that the social and cultural context in which the language is to be used manifests itself (linguistic/sociolinguistic).

- Teachers who can speak, read, and write the language of literacy as well as train others to read and write it. Sociolinguists would insist that these teachers be from the community or be sympathetic to the community's culture. They (see Derwing and Malicky 1992; Hughes and Katz 1989; Lim and Watson 1993) would also recommend that the pedagogy be meaning- focused, not structurally determined, and learner-centered, not teacher- dictated (principally sociolinguistic).

Several recent reports on literacy programs in Peru (Daggett and Wise 1990; Davis, Parker and Eilander 1990; Water 1990; and Waters 1990a,b,c,) show how incorporating both linguistic and sociolinguistic principles can result in literacy programs which are deemed successful. In the pre-program phase, the targeted community is interviewed to determine the need and desire for a literacy program. Questions are asked about the uses of language, the preference of language (minority and majority language status), attitudes toward reading, and propensities concerning materials that should be used in literacy centers. Community data (socioeconomic stability, local patterns of literate language use) and personal data (the education level of the students age, sex, perception of gender roles, and views on language code matters) are also compiled.

This pre-stage allows the literacy program designers to build on the con- siderable linguistic, social and cultural resources that literacy students bring from their home and community. Textual materials evolve from the data collected in the community, and typically include spelling and syllable books designed to demonstrate to the community that its language has its own alphabet. In the Peruvian literacy programs, the texts emphasize the similar- ities and differences between the vernacular language (for instance, Quechua) and Spanish, thereby seeking to facilitate the transfer of reading skills between the two languages.

Pedagogical practices to be used in the program are developed so that teaching and learning style conflicts are minimized. These usually blend the



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formal educational methods of the classroom with the traditional methods of learning in the community's environment (for example, the Amazon in some Peruvian literacy programs). Teachers are trained to have as complete an understanding as possible of the targeted community's cultural values and customs. Literacy facilities and their times of operation are also determined by the desires of the prospective participants. Once a program is in operation, there are constant linguistic and sociolinguistic evaluation and moni- toring of its success. Teachers encourage their students to acquaint others with what they have learned, so that participants motivate non-participants to become involved in the literacy program. Flexibility is maintained because a program is not bound by the extremes of either a linguistic or sociolinguistic perspective.

In such a program, literacy is defined by the program. Transcending the linguistic or sociolinguistic, its definition takes on a philosophical perspective, in which defining literacy means defining reality, life, and knowledge. Literacy becomes an interactive process of knowledge about self, society, and reality, within a continuum that begins with birth and ends with death. It is a notion that can refer to the ability to carry and receive meaning in order to widen one's perception of the world, to increase one's knowledge and to sharpen one's vision.

In a philosophical sense, literacy, therefore, goes beyond mere coding and decoding of print in and out of scripts. Also literacy becomes - and transcends - the culturally bound; factors such as ethnicity, social class, and religion are allowed to manifest themselves in determining the type and level of literacy which a society attains. The decisions about whether a society adopts one type of literacy or another, one level of literacy or another, evolve out of its needs, which literacy fulfills. As needs change, literacy changes as well. To perceive one perspective or one type of literacy as the proper literacy, and to judge cultures and individuals accordingly, generalizes the influence of that perspective or type of literacy on the psychology of a people.

A philosophical perspective towards literacy emphasizes that one society's evaluation of the literacy standards in another society is not only misleading but also not possible because the cultural conventions and needs which one society has differ from those of others. Bruner (1979: 88) eloquently states this philosophical perspective when he writes, "Most of what has emerged from studies of Africans, Eskimos, Aborigines, and other groups shows that the same basic mental functions are present in adults in any culture. What differs is the deployment of these functions."

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