He writes, “Images and words have long coexisted on the printed page and in manuscripts, but relatively few people possessed the resources to exploit the rhetorical potential of images combined with words” (175). Yet, we still elevate the verbal over the visual. Faigley state that “current attitudes toward images were formed in eighteenth-century England when educated people began associating images with ignorance, illiteracy, and deceit” (174). He discusses the grand narrative of alphabetic literacy, which “assumes the existence of a n evolution from pictographs to modern writing systems” and argues that literacy “facilitated abstract thinking and deductive logic” (176). “The paradox of the narrative of alphabetic literacy lies in its claim of a cognitive divide between oral and visual cultures…The essential shortcoming in the narrative lies in its desire to provide a simple explanation of cultural differences by theorizing that writing systems shape cultures. The history of writing suggests just the opposite: cultures freely borrow and adapt systems for information storage when the need arises. This, in its claim for the primacy of the visual, the narrative of alphabetic literacy effaces not only the material tools used in writing…but also the element of visual cognition” (18). More, Scribner and Cole proved that “while literacy produces difference in certain contexts, in the important dimension of logical thinking, literates and illiterates do not differ in performance; many of the abilities claimed especially for literates could be attributed to schooling” (184).
Faigley is interested in discussing the materiality of literacy. He states that “literacy has always been a material, multimedia construct, even through we only now are becoming aware of this multidimensionality and materiality because computer technologies have made it possible for many people to produce and publish multimedia presentations” (175-6). Literacy is material as “a literate act assumes an object, a text that can be read” (174). Additionally, “although language and images are increasingly self-referential, they still have material consequences” (198).
He writes, “Images and words have long coexisted on the printed page and in manuscripts, but relatively few people possessed the resources to exploit the rhetorical potential of images combined with words” (175). Yet, we still elevate the verbal over the visual. Faigley state that “current attitudes toward images were formed in eighteenth-century England when educated people began associating images with ignorance, illiteracy, and deceit” (174). He discusses the grand narrative of alphabetic literacy, which “assumes the existence of a n evolution from pictographs to modern writing systems” and argues that literacy “facilitated abstract thinking and deductive logic” (176). “The paradox of the narrative of alphabetic literacy lies in its claim of a cognitive divide between oral and visual cultures…The essential shortcoming in the narrative lies in its desire to provide a simple explanation of cultural differences by theorizing that writing systems shape cultures. The history of writing suggests just the opposite: cultures freely borrow and adapt systems for information storage when the need arises. This, in its claim for the primacy of the visual, the narrative of alphabetic literacy effaces not only the material tools used in writing…but also the element of visual cognition” (18). More, Scribner and Cole proved that “while literacy produces difference in certain contexts, in the important dimension of logical thinking, literates and illiterates do not differ in performance; many of the abilities claimed especially for literates could be attributed to schooling” (184).
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