a linguistic view of literacy

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Journal of Pragmatics 7 (1983) 533-549

North-Holland

533

A LINGUISTIC VIEW OF LITERACY

R.N. SRIVASTAVA and R.S. GUPTA *

The relationships between speech and writing are analysed from a linguistic point of view.Theoretical arguments are presented to refute the simplistic view that writing is merely a derivative

of speech. It is shown that writing integrates a number of levels of language organisation. While

these linguistic levels are the most important theoretical aspect of the relation between speech and

writing, the practical problem of script choice for hitherto unwritten languages involves several

additional factors which are discussed in the second part of the paper with a focus on the situation

in India.

Literacy has several dimensions and may be viewed from different viewpoints.

The three dimensions of literacy that are of particular interest to us are:

(i) literacy as a skill involving the ability to control the visual (graphic)

medium of language, and to use it for employing written language for

achieving certain socio-cultural ends;

(ii) literacy as an instance of mass-upsurge and a call for the participation of

the socially dep rived and econom ically disadvantaged illiterate masses in

the heritage of written culture; and

(iii) literacy as an enabling factor which, through syllogistic reasoning, linear

codification of reality and the critical accum ulation of know ledge, createsconditions conducive to linguistic inno vation and imaginative creativity.

All the above dimensions may be studied from different view-points viz., from

the point of view of language planning, from the view-point of educational

psychology , or from a purely linguistic point o f view. In the present paper w e

wish to exam ine the various facets an d dimensions of literacy from the

linguistic point of view and try to establish clear relationships between speech

and writing on the one hand, and between literacy and language-use, on the

other.

* Mailing address: R.N. Srivastava, Dept. of Linguistics, University of Dehli, Dehh 110 007,

.India.

0378-2166/83/$3.00 0 1983, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland)



534 R.N. Srivustava, R.S. Gupta / A linguistic view of iteracy

Linguacy, articulacy and literacy

View ed within th e broad er perspe ctive of ‘linguacy’, i.e. the linguistic potential

for comm unication and expression , literacy may be rega rded as an extension of

the functional potential of language with rega rd to the channel of comm unica-

tion wh ich involves reading and writing skills. Linguistic transmission takes

place either throug h phonic substance (aural medium) involving the skills of

speaking and listening (i.e. articulacy), or throug h the graph ic substance (visual

medium ) involving the skills of reading and writing (i.e. literacy). Simply

stated, then, literacy as a technique is the acquisition of skills in the control of

the graphic substance and visual medium of language.

It is generally assum ed that written language is essentially a graph ic

counterpa rt of spee ch and, in som e way s, a substitute for language. This notion

arises fro m an inability to see the vital difference between the oral and visual

manifestation of one and the same ‘form’ in respect of the nature of the

realisation (selection) mad e from the sam e available gram mar and lexicon of a

language. Such a notion leads to a failure to see the consequ ences of literacy on

language use and language behaviour, on the one hand, and to a view of

literacy as nothing but ‘counterfeit articulacy’, on the other . As such, it

becomes essential to appreciate the apparent differences, as well as vital

similarities, that exist between articulacy and literacy.

It is true that articulacy as one of the media of linguacy, is acquired first

and in a spontaneous and automa tic manner. Hum ankind’s acquisition of the

articulacy aspe ct o f language is so unique and the oral medium and language

patterns are so indissolubly integrated that only too often language and spee ch

are taken to be synonymous. It is for this reason that the human spec ies has

been characterised as ‘talking animal’ or ‘speech creature’ and the ‘homo

sapiens’ has been equated with ‘homo loquens’.

This priority of the aural medium has seemed to some students of linguistics good grounds for

denying the validity of a distinction between medium and language at all.. . The sounds of speech

would then actually be a part of language, rather than a medium for language, and the basic

distinction would be not between language and medium but between language and writing

(Abercrombie 1967: 18).

This view mak es articulacy not only central to linguacy but also a part of the

‘common denominator of cultures’ (Murdo ch 1945). Since the basic channel

for all linguistic comm unication is vocal-auditory and since this channel is

universally available to all normal human beings, any generalisation about

spoken language becomes also a hypothesis about human cultural universals(Hacke tt 1963: 14 ). It may be noted here that literacy is neither coterminous

with languag e, as is articulacy, nor does it have universal appeal for char-

acterising humans as ‘writing animals’ or ‘graph ic c reature s’.



R.N. Srivastava, R.S. Gupta / A linguistic view of iteracy 535

It is sometimes asserted that the human race started to be human when it

began to use articulated sounds of language as a means of communication.

Since language is unique to humans, and since no other organ isms acquire

language, it is maintained that the capacity for language (fucultb de lunguge) isconstitutionally available to humans alone, and that language as a unique

system of verbal behaviour (vocal sign) is species-sp ecific. Langue (a specific

language) as oppose d to langage is acquired in the process of interaction

between humans and their socio-ecolog ical setting (Lennebe rg 196 7). It is

throug h the vocal mean s of verbal communication that human beings begin

their developm ent from mere biological beings to social beings. As opp osed to

primitive gesture language, vocal language is a qualitatively transform ed means

of comm unication giving rise to speech com munities with the aid of logical

structures and formal systems - better known as gramm ars of languages. It isfor this reason that the term ‘articulacy’ can be used in two senses: in the

broader sense it denotes the acquisition of grammar, as well as the use of

gram mar through th e vocal-auditory channel of comm unication (in Chom skian

terms it is com petence as well as perform ance ), and in its narrow er sense, it is

merely an acquisition of the skill in the control of the oral medium of language

(i.e., perform ance alone).

Writing is a cultural invention which com es mu ch later in the history of

human developm ent. But if culture is viewe d as dependent on a human-type

cognitive proce ss, it is also species-sp ecific. If the capac ity for language is thefirst turning point in human history wh ere man as a biological being is

identified as being qualitatively different from the rest of the animal beings,

and the use of articulated sound-language is the vital point at wh ich humans as

biological beings ar e transform ed into social beings, th e invention and the use

of writing as an institutionalised sign-system may be rega rded as a significant

uplifting of the human race in a distinct cultural dimension. No other cultural

invention can be said to have exe rted as grea t an influence on the upw ard

developm ent of the human race on the cultural and social plane as writing has

done.There is a general tendency to identify writing with articulacy, usually

expressed in the form of a statement that writing is a device to record and tool

to represen t speech. This is far from being true since writing is neither a

substitute for articulacy nor an exact representation of the spoken variant of

language. The motivation for the invention of writing must have been the need

to supplement the spoken actualisation of the verbal sign.

There are frontiers where language as a purely phonetic medium of communication no longer

suffices, where its limitations in space and time are no longer equal to the demands of the

progressive development of civilisation, and man is obliged to devise a further tool for himself

capable of overcoming these limitations. This new tool is writing (Jensen 1970: 15).

Writing, as already stated, is a late cultural invention and it com es later than



536 R . N . S r i v a s t a v a , R . S . Gu p t a A l i n g u i s t i c v i ew of l i t e r a c y

articulacy in the history of individuals, too. A child learns to spea k and

understand others speaking from the first year of his or her life. Children learn

to exchange meanings with others. How ever, a time comes when all the acts of

meaning the child wishe s to perfo rm cannot be perfor med by speaking/listen-ing alone. From this point onwa rds, reading and writing “ make mo re sense to

him” (Halliday 1978: 206). Thus we not only learn to read and write for much

the same reasons as we learn to speak and listen, but there are certain

situational contexts in wh ich reading and writing “ make more sense” than

speaking and listening. Thus for identity in absentia we still requ ire the

evidence of one’s signature rather than one’s voice-print. The point th at we

wish to emphasise here is that there is a functional complementarity between

articulacy and literacy, i.e. between spee ch and writing. Wh ile certain domains

and situational contexts call for the use of articulacy skills, other s can beapprop riately handled by literacy skills.

The ontogenetic primacy of spee ch does in no way imply that writing is its

derivative or that writing merely serves to mirror speech. The written word and

the spoken word do not exist one for the other; rather they exist for wha t they

represent, i.e. units of language. “The system of speech and the system of

writing are thus only two realisations out of an infinite number of possible

systems, of which no one can be said to be more fundamental than the other”

(Uldall 1944: 7). Here one might cite the analogy of a poem (an abstraction)

which may be realised as a written record or in the form of a recitation.Because of the fact that speech and writing represent the same constructs of

linguacy we get a parallelism between the two sets of primes: phoneme: allo-

phone : phone, corresponding to graphem e : allograph : graph. In certain cases

we also get synonymic correspondences between graphem es and phonemes

viz., (G) % [PI, for instance (m) e lml in English. Ho wever, since the two

system s are two distinct and autonom ous realisations, we get certain oblique

correspondences as follows (Gupta 1971):

(1 )

(2 )

(3 )

(4 )

(5 )

Polyphonemic: (G) + IPi, P2, P3. . . I

e.g. (c) + Is - kl as in cell, cycle, call, come, etc.

Synthetic: (G) + IPi + P21

e.g. (x) + lk + sl - lg + z( as in OX, box, exact, exit, etc.

Analytic: (G, + G2) + IPI

e.g. (c+h)-+jk- tS1 as in chemist, chrome, church, chill, etc.

Alternant: (G) -+ IPl but IPI + (G,, G,, G3...)

e.g. (f) + If) but If I + (f - ph - g h) as in fail, physics, rough, etc.

Auxiliary: (G) --f 1+I

e.g. (k) --, I +I as in knob, know, knee, etc.

It is only when we prom ote, in our linguistic theory, the concept that writing is

a second ary activity w hich invariably substitutes for the original activity, i.e.



R.N. Sriuastava, R.S. Gupta / A linguistic view of iteracy 537

speech, that we begin to seek an isomorphism between speech and writing. It is

this expec tation that leads to the attem pt either at predicting ‘spelling’ for

phonetic sequences underlying words or word-sequences, or at suggesting

‘pronunciation’ for any sequence of graphic symbols. Whenever such a matchis absent (as often happens in the case of English) we make such pronounce-

ments as “The peculiar badness of the English [writing] system lies in the fact

that it fails about equally in both” (Hill 1967), or that English orthog raphy is

“antiquated, inconsistent and illogical” (Zachrisson 193 0). Such a view of a

writing system , in turn, leads to attem pts at reformation with the sole motiva-

tion of making the writing system m ore competent to mirror speech. Wh at is

often fo rgotten is that writing can reflect units which a re higher than phonemes,

i.e. syllables, morphem es, words or even concepts. For example, Chom sky and

Halle (1968 ) have convincingly show n that the English spelling system is moreabstract in its nature than a system with simple grapheme-phonem e correspon-

dence.

A survey of the various writing system s that have existed at different points

in human history attests this. This history of writing involves the use of

successively more analytic units of language to correspond to the marks and

squiggles on paper or leaf or rock. Changes in writing system have always

proceed ed in a particular direction and in a particular order: from the

representation of ideas or meanings (semasiography) to the representation of

words (logography), thence to the representation of syllables and then to theyet smaller alphabe tic units of phonemes (alphab ets). It will be obvious that as

at each succeeding stage “the number of symbols in the script decreases,

concurrently and, as a direct consequence, the abstractness of the relation

between the written symbols an d the meaning increases” (Gleitman and Rozin

1977: 3). The abstractness of relations increases at each successive stage since

there are more meanings than words, more words than syllables, and more

syllables than spee ch sounds. At this point it wou ld not be inappropriate to

mention the important distinction that exists between the linguist’s pro pose d

device of a phonetic alphab et, and institutionalised writing system s wh ichincreasingly tend to refer to the meaning directly w ithout necessarily taking a

detour via the corresponding spoken utterances (Vach ek 1945 -49). In the

context of literacy we find two theories: one which prop oses that written

language is processed only via spoken language, and the other which claims

that there is no mediation of spoken language between the written symbols and

meaning. We maintain that the truth lies between these two extrem e positions.

Wh ile the mediation of spoken language cannot be denied at the stage of initial

literacy, the extent of such mediation decreases progressively as we move

towards global literacy.W hat is important to remem ber is that writing usefully integrates a number

of levels of language organisation. M uch of the controversy and misunder-

standing regarding literacy and writing h as arisen becau se of the essentially



538 R.N. Sriuastaua, R.S. Gupta / A linguistic view of literacy

different approac hes adopted by literacy experts and linguists. Literacy ex perts

have , by and large, maintained that the skills of reading and writing involve

processes much beyond letter-sound correspondence. The information-process-

ing approach has led them to make increasing use of psychology, to the totalneglect o f linguistic principles. On the other hand, lang uage expe rts have

confined their object of inquiry to the articulacy aspe ct of linguacy. If they

paid any attention at all, it wa s tow ards establishing units of spoken language

which may be regarded as ‘norms’ for reducing language to a system of

writing. Literacy exp erts take reading at its mos t global extreme , exhorting

learners to gras p who le meanings without any explicit re ference to the linguis-

tic underpinning of writing system s. (This is often called the meaning-oriented

teaching of reading and writing.) On the other hand, mos t of the linguistic

experts restrict the problem of literacy to the ‘alphabetic principle’. Wh at eac hset of experts overlooks in its eagerness, is that the process of reading has two

aspects: decod ing ‘print into meaning’ and decod ing it also into ‘sound’. In

other wo rds, reading may be called a skill in the ‘sounding out’ of wo rds, and

at the sam e time, a skill in the ‘extraction of meaning’. This m ay be illustrated

by the English writing system w hich employs two ways of representing words

orthograph ically: phonetic and lexical. Thus, in such wo rds as ‘pill’, ‘kill’, ‘bill

and ‘sill’ the phonetic differences between [p], [k], [b] and [s] are represented by

different letters. As shown by Carol Chom sky (1970), this leads to a phoneti-

cally oriented orthog raphy . Contrary to this, a lexically motivated spellingsystem makes the wo rds in the lexicon that are related in meaning look alike in

orthog raph y. In this case , the phonetic differences of semantically related

wo rds are not represe nted by different letters; cp. e.g., the vowe l alternation

(Hy - i) as in ‘divine-divinity’ and ‘collide-collision’ etc., or the consonant

alternation (g - j) in such wo rds as ‘rigour-rigid’ etc. are not represented in

spelling. ‘This facilitates the identification of lexical items and the process of

extracting meaning, though it does crea te some difficulty in the ‘sounding out’

of the word. Experiments have, howev er, shown that the reader soon over-

com es this difficulty by learning to apply phonological rules concerning vow eland consonant alternations.

To recapitulate then, the salient features of the relationship between speech

and writing are: (a) writing enco des meaning and may, in certain case s, reflect

sounds also; (b) chronologically, writing com es later than speech in the history

of mankind, societies and individuals and, once institutionalised, it may gain

autonomy; (c) unlike spee ch, writing has no biological basis; (d ) writing has a

greater d egree of permanence than speech and transcends space and time; (e)

writing serves the intellectual function (in terms of Pop per’s ‘third w orld’) of

being the vehicle of objective know ledge; (f) writing is relatively invariant,wh erea s spee ch is inherently variable; and (g) writing has social priority in

terms of prestige.

Reading as a skill therefo re consists primarily of fulfilling certain types of



R.N. Srioastaua,R.S. G upta / A linguisticview of liferacy 539

subtasks related to the hierarchica l organisation of language as a form in

correct appraisa l of their tempo ral and spatial manifestations (Srivastava et al.

1978 ); It involves the following two types o f factors:

(a ) Intervention factors which include two-dimensional activities such as (i)learning process related (mathemagenic) factors (eye movements, concentra-

tion, mem ory, motivation, etc.), and (ii) contextual factors (illustrations, dia-

gram s, explanations and technical information); and (b) linguistic factors which

are concerned basically with the process ing skill connected with the three-

strata1 organisation of written language such as (i) recognition, i.e.

graphe mic/letter process ing, (ii) structuring, i.e. morp hem ic/lexemic and syn-

tactic/syntagmatic processing , and (iii) interpretation, i.e. textual process ing.

While establishing a correlation between writing and reading the following

facts h ave to be kep t in mind: (a) Read ing is a linguistic experienc e, i.e. th eread er is concerned with a significant activity related to language, rather than

with comm unicating ideas through drawing or other modes of non-linguistic

representations (Venezky 1967). (b) Read ing is conce rned with the ‘signe linguis-

tique’, i.e. it involves both aspe cts of the sign - ‘signif (designatum) and

‘signifiant’ (sign vehicle). (c) Reading is an act of decoding messages encoded

through the visual sign vehicle i.e., apa rt from identifying letters and recording

wo rds and sentences, it also involves interpretation throug h a mediation

process. (d) Read ing is not a symm etrical mirror-ima ge of writing, i.e. whatever

is true of writing is not, mutatis mutandis, true of reading as such.Reading is thus a transformation of the graph ic continuum into a sequen ce

of discrete (linguistic) units of different levels as manifestations of established

linguistic forms for establishing som e kind of relationship with designatum and

extra-linguistic reality. Despite many years of resea rch in reading and writing,

we have hardly been able to develop any coherent linguistic theory of literacy.

Linguistics, as pointed out by Shuy, “has been viewed myopically as phonol-

ogy, phonics or other low-level decod ing levels” (Shuy 1977 : ix), and hence , it

has been viewed as merely a set of methods and techniques rather than as a

content area of literacy. Time has come now that w e develop a linguisticperspe ctive for literacy, with a view to defining reading and writing as

linguistic processe s constituting a prop er area of enquiry within a general

theory of language and language use. A global linguistic perspective has to

differentiate between the following three aspe cts of literacy:

(a ) mec hanics of literacy, i.e. the ability to control the visual (gra phic) medium

of a language (reading and writing);

(b) pragm atics of literacy, i.e. the ability to use a language in the writtenmedium; and

(c ) ethnograp hy of literacy, i.e. the ability to employ written language as a tool

to achiev e certain socio-cultural ends.




Literacy and script-choice

Wh ile literacy in those languages which have a standardised script (a writing

system ) and a literary tradition, pose s only problems related to curriculum-planning, literacy in non-literate languages, i.e. those languages for which no

written system exists, pose s another, more challenging problem - that of

finding and adopting or devising a writing-system for them . In such cas es two

solutions seem to offer themse lves - choosing and adopting an appro priate

writing system from amongst those existing for the other languages, or devising

a new script-system, keeping in mind the salient linguistic feature s of the

language in question. The form er solution entails sociolinguistic considerations

such as appropriateness of the chosen script for the language in question, the

attitudes of the speakers of the non-literate language towards the languagewh ose script is chosen , the deg ree of emotional or religious or political

importance of the script that is chosen, the desire for identity-maintenance (or

its absence) among the members of the speech comm unity, etc. The latter

solution entails purely lingustic consideration and proce dures . Whethe r the

decision favours the adoption and adaptation of an already existing script or

the creation of a new script would and should depend on the following

considerations: (a) linguistic considerations, which demand that a writing

system sh ould be econom ical, consistent and unambiguous as far as possible;

(b) psycholinguistic considerations, which require that a writing system shouldrespect the process of reading and writing; (c) educational considerations, which

demand that a writing system should be easy and quick to learn; (d) sociolingu-

istic considerations, which a re of two sorts, internal and external: (i) internal

consideration dem ands that the writing system should relate properly to social

and regional languag e v arieties, and (ii) external considerations demand that

the writing system sho uld relate properly to writing system s and languages in

use in culturally important spee ch comm unities, as well as to other sy stems

already in use in the community; (e) cultural considerations, which require that

the users’ attitudes should be favourable towards the writing system, and thatthey should consider it easy to learn and aesthetically satisfying; and (f)

technological considerations, which require that the writing system should be

pre-eminently suited to modern machine-printing, information storag e, etc.

(Stubbs 1980).

Abov e all, one must remember the sociolinguistic principle that no matter

how elegant or rigorous or systema tic and regular a given writing system is, it

is futile if the users (native spea kers) do not like it or if they see it as a threat to

their linguistic or ethnic identity. M oreov er, one should also bear in mind th e

fact tha t a writing system does not exist merely as a means of transcribing(encoding sound and meaning) but also as a marker of identity of the language

for which it is used and of the people who use it.

The variety of possible solutions thal are available in the ma tter of script-



R.N. Sriuastava, R.S. Gupta / A linguistic view o f iteracy 541

choice and the linguistic and sociolinguistic implications thereo f can be best

illustrated by taking up for discussion the multilingual and pluricultural

context of India. Bes ides having an astonishing number of languages (both

standard, literary national languages and minor languages), India has a widevariety of script systems. According to Pattanayak (1981) there are ten major

script system s in India: Bengali-Assam ese-Manipuri, Devanagari, Gujarati,

Gurmukhi, Kannada-Telugu, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil, Perso-Arabic and Ro-

man. While the major script systems adequately represent the major literary

languages, the minority and tribal languages present a rather com plicated

picture. Som e languages are written in different scripts. For instance, Konkani

is written in Dev anaga ri, Kannada , Ma layalam and Rom an’ scripts; Sindhi

employs two script systems and Santhali uses as many as five script systems.

As oppose d to this, we have instances of major script systems which are usedto represent two or more languages (e.g., Devanagari, Perso-Arabic and

Rom an). In addition to the above there are several minor script system s, and

new script systems are being propo sed every day for linguistic, political,

religious and ethnic reasons. The situation, in terms of script-choice and

literacy, may be succinctly stated as follows:

(1) There a re ten major writing system s (w ith long literary traditions) wh ich

are used to represent the major regional languages, as well as some minor

languages.

(2) Script-language correspondence varies from cases whe re there is one script

for one language, to cases where one script is used to represent several

languages, thence to cases where two or more scripts are used for one

language and, finally, to cas es where there is no script for a language.

The question of choosing or adopting a script for a non-literate language (for

literacy purpo ses) arises because of the belief that literacy can be best initiated

in the learner’s mo ther tongue. This obviously means that when ever thelearner’s moth er tongue happe ns to be a non-literate language, it has to be

given a writing system. Within the Indian context, there is a variety of possible

solutions to this problem . Som e such alternative solutions are:

devising a new script for the non-literate language in question;

choosing a script system from am ongst those which are already in use, and

modifying it to suit the linguistic feature s of the language in question;

choice (b) entails decisions as to whethe r the script chosen should be the

one used for the dominant major language of the region to which thenon-literate language belongs, or if it should be the one that is used fo r the

nationa 1 official language (Hindi; another possible decision might be to use

the Rom an script for the non-literate language);



542

Cd)

R.N. Srivastava, R.S. Gupta / A linguistic view o f iteracy

choice (a ) entails decisions as to wh ethe r an entirely new set of ortho-

graphic symbols is to be created or whe ther symbols are to be drawn frcm

existing script-systems and suitably m odified with diacritical mark s for

taking care of the linguistic features of the non-literate language inquestion. Ano ther decision concerns the phonetic value to be given to the

symbols chosen from existing script-systems - whethe r a particular symbol

should retain the phonetic value it has in the other language(s) for which it

is used, or should be given a new phonetic value, keeping in mind the

phonem ic system of the non-literate language in question.

Within the Indian context, despite voc iferous advo cacy of new script system s,

the general tendency has been to adapt and adopt for a non-literate language

the script system already in use for the dominant regional (literary) language.“Thus, the Oriya s cript is used for Kuvi (though Oriya is Indo-Aryan and

Kuvi is Dravidian). Perso-A rabic is used for Gojri. Rom an is used for Ao

Naga , and so on“ (Sridhar 1982: 223). It is obvious that once the dominant

majority language of the region is chosen for literacy purpo ses in the mothe r-

tongue, the process of learning is facilitated, especially at a later stage of scho ol

education whe re the educands have to learn the dominant regional language.

Ho wever, while facilitating the process of learning, such a decision is likely to

be resented by the native spea kers of the non-literate language on the ground

that it tends to subm erge their linguistic and ethnic identity. In a countrywh ere sc ripts and languages are often not only tokens of linguistic and ethnic

identity, but also carriers of religious traditions and cultural heritage , the

choice of the script system s of a dominant regional language is likely to arouse

hostility on these grounds too.

How ever, once a script system is chosen for a given non-literate language,

there are serious problems, pertaining to applied linguistics, when the script

system has to be suitably modified and adapted to suit the linguistic features of

the non-literate language. This problem is particularly vexing when we com e to

the representation of suprasegmental features such as tone, length and stress.For instance, when the Roman script system w as selected for Ao Nag a, it was

suggested that the letters ‘Q’ and ‘q’ should be used after vow els to indicate

‘high’ and ‘low’ tone respectively. This suggestion, howev er, was rejected by

the native literates on the grounds that it wou ld mar the beauty of the script

and make it cumbersome. Similarly, for Bodo , which uses the Devanagari

script, it wa s sugg ested that the diacritics ‘:’ and ‘.’ should be used to represent

‘high’ and ‘low’ tone respectively. Again, the suggestion wa s rejected on the

ground that it would unnecessarily com plicate the spelling system .

In dealing with such problem s one has to bear in mind the theoreticalrequiremen ts of maxima l efficiency, econom y and absence of ambiguity. At the

same time, one has to remember that writing is also a tool to be used by the

native literates. As such, the users’ ease ‘and aesthetic sense have a lso to be



R.N. Srivastava, R.S. Gupta / A linguistic view of literacy 543

given due consideration, and a balance has to be struck between the demands

of theory and the needs of the users.

Literacy and language-use

In orde r to grasp th e seman tics of literacy, one must clearly understand two

pairs of concep ts: literacy : non-literacy and literate : uneducated. Non-literacy

may be defined as the condition of a society wh ere writing has neither been

able to develop sufficiently for its meaningful use, nor has it been able to

genera te a value for literate culture that marginalises those wh o are condi-

tioned to the life-style of an esoteric oral culture. Illiteracy, on the other hand,

may be defined as the condition of “an individual or a group that has failed to

master the generally accepted skills of the culture and is thus cut off from thecultural heritage of contemporaries” (Finnegan 197 2). In advan ced societies

literacy takes on a social form in the emergence of occupations which require

the skills of reading and writing fo r their operational implementation. In such

.contexts, those w ho do not poss ess literacy skills can be labelled as illiterates.

If an educated person is defined as one who has a critical mind, organised

knowledge and skilled ability, one may say that there are many who are

‘literate-uneducated’ and several other s wh o are ‘illiterate-educated’ . In India

we have instances of many great poets and saints (like Kabirdas and Ravidas)

who were acknowledged reformers and educators without ever having com e incontact with paper or ink.

It has been said earlier that literacy involves several factor s and variables.

For a com plete understanding of all implications of literacy, it is further

necessa ry to bear in mind the following three aspects:

(a ) Orientational: Speec h is acquired in response to a language faculty with

which humans are biologically endowed . Our organs of acoustic encoding and

decod ing are evolutionarily adapted to discha rge the functions of articulation

and auditory perception (Lenneberg 1967). The same, howeve r, is not true of

the organs involved in reading and writing. In fact “‘reading is a comp arativelynew and arbitrary human ability for wh ich specific biological adaptations do

not, so far as we know, exist.. . the eye is not biologically adapted to

language” (Gleitman and Rozin 19 77: 3). The orientational aspe ct of literacy is

concerned with all those visual and manual moda lities which are involved in

learning to read and write. It is concerned with the skills called ‘decod ing’

writing into spee ch and ‘encoding’ spee ch into writing.

(b) Operational: This refe rs to the use of language in the written (visual)

medium . It has very wide implications for literacy. Literacy is not merely the

‘sounding out’ of wo rds or sentences; it is the skill to read with understandingand comprehension. This aspe ct is also concerned with the control of a variety

of language wh ich is institutionally used in the ecologica l setting to wh ich

writing is contextually appro priate.



544 R.N. Sriuastava, R.S. Gupta / A linguistic view of literacy

(c) Functional: This refers to the ability to use written language as the

instrument of one’s psycho logical rem ake of ‘phonetic culture’. a “channel for

cross-cultural comm unication that could serve as a bridge between oral culture

and written culture” (Srivastava 1979 : 1). It is in this context that M cLuhandecla red that phonetic literacy, as it has pene trated the oral-aural comm unities

of China and India, has altered very little their world of sound. Acco rding to

him, “even Russia is still profoundly oral in bias. Only gradually does literacy

alter sub-structures of language and sensibility” (McLuhan 1962: 21).

Here we must em phasise the fact that the functional aspect of literacy does

not confine itself to just a cquiring the skills of reading and writing. In fact, it

includes also the ability to ope rate in the written medium as a potential of

language use. We should remember that the written mode of language, in a

civilised s ociety, regulates many aspects of human behaviour and many kindsof social interaction. By not providing skills in literacy a society is, in a way ,

denying its mem bers the opportunity to enter and control many sp here s and

vital domains of social behaviour and cultural interaction. As already stated,

literacy has two aspects: (a) the ability to control the visual medium of

language (reading and writing skills), and (b) the ability to use language in the

written medium in all those situations to which writing is contextually ap-

propriate. The second aspect has a much w ider context. It concerns not merely

the control of the medium but also control of the written variant of a language.

The failure to understand a written text in Hindi can thus be due either to thefact that one is unable to control the language wh ich has been encode d in the

medium , or that one is unable to control the medium in wh ich the encoding

has been done.

In orde r to mak e the distinction clear one can cite two specific situations: a

situation which raises the problem of script-choice (discusse d earlier) and a

situation wh ich raises the problem of language or style choice. Within India,

Nagaland offers a remarkable example of the second type of situation. This

region is characteristically marked for a large number of mutually unintelligi-

ble dialects. Mem bers of different speech communities have evolved a contact

pidgin for inter-dialect comm unication. It is this language of wide r communi-

cation (comp letely unrelated to any of the dialects), wh ich is being pro moted

for literacy programm es. This has led to a language of education and adminis-

tration comp letely different from the language-variety used in the hom e or

village setting.

Muc h more than this, the choice in the matter of language/style use in

literacy is concerned with the problem of semi-literacy. In the context of the

massive literacy p rogram me launched in the country recently, we have obvi-

ously relegated the problem of the semi-literates, a problem which has a lastingimpact on our social structure and educational system, since they are the

persons who are making our educational,system dysfunctional and ineffective.

In fact, the problem of semi-literacy and the semi-literates is of no less



R.N. Sriuastaua, R.S. Gupta / A linguistic view of iteracy 545

significance and of no less magnitude than the problem of illiteracy and the

illiterates, as the former are the ones who are ‘literate-uneducated’.

A person going to be initiated in a literacy progra mm e already has som e

comm and over a spoken language. It is in this context that it is said thatliteracy presu ppos es articulacy. But it is quite possible that a language or style

prom oted by the educational system is different from the one already in use in

spoken form if it is not fortuitously congruent with the mother-tong ue. In a

multilingual and pluricultural society like ours many situational types, attest-

ing a mism atch between language/style used orally in verbal communication

and the one emp loyed institutionally in written mod e of comm unication can be

cited. It is this mism atch which later leads to social differentiation and

becomes the root of semi-literacy.

Let us consider one or two specific instances. It is generally argue d thatliteracy is not invariably acquired in the mother-tong ue. As there are instances

of mother-tongues which have no writing system of their own, and as in

multilingual and pluricultural societies these unwritten mother-tong ues have

low status and restricted function, one may choos e for literacy a language

wh ich is not the learner’s own language. In all such situations, that language is

selected for literacy which has a status o f wider communication, for example,

French in Brittany, English in Ghana or Russian for many of the minority

language spea kers of Soviet Union. No t so different is the case in the Hindi

region o f India. Literacy gets initiated with the concom itant effort of teachingthe Hindi language, which has linguistically a cod e quite different from the

cod es (dialects) wh ich their users employ in articulacy. In spite of the fact that

som e of its dialects are significantly rich in culture and literary tradition, the

social-cum-educational pressu re is such that instead o f imparting literacy

throug h the language content of these dialects, its skills are achiev ed through

standard Hindi.

Similarly, language styles wh ich exist in diglossic relationship pose another

set of problems (De Silva 1976). For example, spoken forms of Tamil language

never find use in Tamil alphabe t, and textbook writers of Telugu invariablyselect a language style wh ich is almost never used in oral comm unication. In

such a situation the oral variety is labelled as inferior, inelegant and, at times,

also incorrect and hence gets marginalised. Extrem e caution is observ ed to

maintain the venerable classical and puristic style of language for education

despite the users’ total inability to comm unicate in it. W hethe r it is dialect

speakers making an attempt for entry into the written mode of communication,

or mem bers of a spee ch community in diglossic situations making an en-

deavo ur to mas ter the socially prestigious literary style of a language, they are

overburden ed with extra linguistic load for a restricted usage (Srivastava 197 8).The elegant and superior variety of language or style being promo ted in

literacy progra mm es has left many learners at the level of semi-literacy - a

level whe re a learner knows how to read and write but is unable to exploit this




skill in express ing him- or herself for a variety of purpo ses - specially in those

situations to which writing is contextually appro priate.

An interesting instance of semi-literacy is the case of Indian students in

English medium schools, as pointed out by Sah (1978). Despite the fact thatthese students are brough t up in the environment of an Indian language at

hom e and am ong friends, they first achieve full literacy in English. As a

consequ ence, their literacy in the mother-tongu e is generally marginalised in

function and usage. A language wh ich is widely and fluently used in speech

and informal situations, as well as in wide domains of social activities is thus

retarde d, while literacy in that language gets prom oted in wh ich their capac ity

as well as opportunity for use is extremely limited when comp ared to native

speakers of English.

View ed in the functional perspective, the conflict between the use ofdialect/mother tongue vs. (standard) language gets resolved from within the

literacy program me. Conce rned literature on literacy raises two conflicting

claims, viz.

(a) literacy as a skill is, mos t effectively achiev ed in the mo ther tongue as

literacy presu ppos es articulacy, and

(b) literacy as a function is mos t effectively achieve d in the language of wide r

comm unication and culture.

These above mentioned claims make two conflicting demands on language

use in literacy prog ram mes , especially in our multilingual setting where

mother-tong ues are generally neither languages of wide r comm unication nor

are they used in the ecological setting to wh ich writing is contextually ap-

propriate. On the other hand, most of the illiterates have command over their

mother-tong ues (dialects) only. Especially in the village setting, they have no

access to the prestigious’(stand ard) language. In our formal educational system

we impart literacy skill in the standard language from th e first step of the

programm e itself. For exam ple, irresp ective of different dialect bases , literacy

is initiated in the Hindi speaking region throu gh primers written in standard

Hindi language. This practice , first of all violates condition (a) wh ich states

that literacy is mos t effectively achiev ed in the mo ther tongue, and secondly,

by down grading the learners’ mo ther tongue, it crea tes a gulf between literacy

movem ent and mass participation. \ ,

W e have to evolve our own literacy mod el, suited to yield the best result in

our multilingual and pluricultural setting. Su ch a mode l prop oses to initiate

literacy in the language/style in which the educan ds have oral com petence

(becau se literacy as a skill is mos t effectively achiev ed in moth er tongues). We

have to bear in mind the following two dictums:

(a ) Literacy is a progressively contirmous proce ss, i.e., it can be extended

indefinitely within the institutional writing skill. In this con text we can



R.N. Sriuastaua, R.S. Gupta / A linguistic view of literacy 541

make a distinction between initial literacy and progressive literacy. While

initial literacy is concerned with com petence in the written language as

distinct from writing as a medium , progres sive or advanc ed literacy is

concerned with control of the written language for a variety of purposes -vocational, intellectual and aesthe tic. Progre ssive literacy is an unending

process from which even the ‘literates’ are not free.

(b) Literacy is operationally a continuous process, i.e., it can be extended

indefinitely within the institutional writing system of the moth er tongue

and beyond. In this context we can mak e a distinction between mono-literacy

and bi-literacy. The fact is that literacy is acquired once. H oweve r, the use

of writing may be extend ed in a multidimensional way . It is possible that

while learning a second language one employ s either the writing system of’

one’s own mo ther tongue (m ono-literacy) or the writing system institution-ally used for the target language (bi-literacy).

Once the educands are able to control the written medium of their mother

tongue, their skill in literacy can be extend ed to the language of wide r

communication. This should not be viewed as shift-over programm e. Our

mode l for -literacy sh ould be conceived as an extension of the domain of

literacy activities with functional roles allocated to the use of the written

medium in respect of two codes - mother tongue (local needs and areas relatedto the ethnic group and its cultural heritage ) and regional (standard ) language

(supralocal needs and areas related to abstract knowledge and scientific

thoug hts). The functionality in the use can be taken as provisional. It is quite

possible that a grea ter role will be assigned to the written medium of the

mother tongue once the school begins to provide recognition and support for

it. The model proposes the competence in and control over the regional

(standard ) language, recogn ised as medium of instruction in our formal

education system, without downgrading the educands’ mother tongue. The

advan tage of this mod el is that the literacy programm e will neither genera tepressu re on adult educands for learning two skills at a time - literacy (reading

and writing) skills as well as articulacy (speaking and listening) skills in a

language of wide r comm unication, nor will it stigmatise the educan ds’ dialect.

In other wo rds, the propo sal envisages the initiation of literacy in the moth er

tongue and a gradua l transfer to the dominant, mainstream language after the

elementary schoo l stage. This implies the extension, at a later schoo l stage , of

the literacy skills to the mainstream language, thus opening up opportunities

for the learner to enter the wide r cultural world of the dominant language, as

well as have grea ter socio-eco nomic opportunities. This kind of gradua l trans-fer of literacy skills also mee ts the educational and psycho logical requirements

mentioned earlier.



548 R.N. Sriuastava, R.S. Gupta / A linguistic view o f iteracy

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R.N. Srivartava, R.S. Gupta / A linguistic view of literacy 549

R.N. Srivastava is professor of Linguistics at Delhi University, India. He received his Ph.D from

Leningrad University (USSR). Carried out his post-doctoral research at UCLA (USA). Has served

as Member-expert in Language-Teaching from India to UNESCO, Paris. Author of five books and

several research papers in Russian, English and Hindi. Areas of specialisation: Applied linguistics,

Stylistics and Generative phonology.

R.S. Gupta is a senior lecturer in English language and literature at Zakir Husain College, Delhi

University, India. He received his training in linguistics at Delhi University and at the University

of Colorado (USA). He obtained his D.Phil. from York University (UK) and has several research

papers to his credit. Areas of specialisation: Linguistics and language teaching, Sociolinguistics and

Twentieth-century English literature.

a linguistic view of literacy

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