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>Where does writing begin and reading end? Where does speech end and writing >begin? Why is speech given a primacy from which is developed writing? The >idea that speech comes first and is distinct from writing is an imperialist >idea and buys into the very structures of racism in the history of Western >thought and theories of language Oral cultures do in fact predate literate cultures, though they often have run parallel. However, you can just watch a child - a child learns to speak first and then learns how to write. In every case I have seen or heard of, anyway. And that hardly seems to me a function of Western Imperialism. There is absolutely no privileging of literacy over orality in what I was saying. And I am the first to admit that these are complex questions. >So people who are claimed to be illiterate are said to >be lacking something, are lesser people, even if the claim is made that they >can participate by using speech in laguage. This is still a discriminatory >judgement, even if such a judgement is not intended as such. I have taught >creative writing to so-called illiterate people... the very term illiterate >is a misnomer laden with discriminatory judgements, I find. Not necessarily. Enzensberger has an interesting essay on illiteracy in _Mediocrities and Delusions_ which proffers a very different view. A