Chapters 1,9 & 10 - Handbook of Research on Writing

Chapter 1
Though I'm not sure I agree 100%, Schamandt-Besserat & Erarad, argue that writing developed more distinctly from art and as a need to record & manage consumer transactions. (Wait a minute, how many goats did I sell you?) Dr. Kist brought this up in class as well.

I think this text thus far has been very careful with presenting the how writing emerged in the world, not just from a very western perspective. Writing emerged in three different geographical areas: Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica and China. Societies that placed a greater emphasis on writing were of course societies that we tended to better understand, thus to value as more "cultured."

As a person who has studied phonics (through the form of spelling - I didn't use a spelling book to teach spelling, I used more of a developmental spelling approach), I found the way that different forms of writing emerged grapho-phonemically really fascinating: while cuneiform began as a logographic system (one sign = one concept), it eventually evolved to include the concept of different syllables, but not individual sounds making it a syllabary. (p.15) I also found it absolutely amazing that the alphabet emerged only once and that ALL alphabets derive from the same first alphabet. Now here is where I would love to ask a speech pathologist if this is because these same sounds have a physiological component to them. The alphabet as we know it began with 22 letters (all consonants) which were phonemes. It apparently sure beat learning 600 cuneiform signs. It was the Greeks who added letters for vowels (adding some aspects of their Indo-European language to the Semitic), so it was easier to transcribe the spoken word. From the Greeks the alphabet spread to the Etruscans who were conquered by the Romans who went on to conquer a whole bunch of people, thereby spreading the Latin alphabet that we know and use today. The chapter also cleared up some misconceptions I'd had about Chinese in that most characters do represent speech sounds (p.16).

I thought the John Goody quote on page 18 that characterizes writing as " technology of the intellect" (p.18) was a good one to keep in the pocket.

Finally, writing is still evolving - we are not "there." I remember the first time I saw an emoticon and thought that the person sending the message had clearly missed a few days of school when the teacher was going over punctuation...

Ch. 9
A quote for potential future use:
"The invention of writing made knowledge more readily and reliably remembered, transported across time and space, and shared, by copying among multiple people and sites." But writing to, "construct[ing] abstractions apart from instances" leads to the possibility of multiple interpretations - thus, the reader has to make inferences to reconstruct situations. (p.143) As Dr. Sandmann said, "Without writers, readers would not make inferences." I thought the next few quotes also had implications for literary inferential thinking (as I can make inferences visually as well as auditorally as well - inference is found not only in the domain of the printed word):
"Writing facilitates inspecting exact wording to hold authors accountable for what was said, as well as comparing accounts and inconsistencies, differences and contradictions. Although these tasks can be carried out in oral contexts, and none are necessarily consequences of the acquisition of literacy, these facilitations nonetheless are consistent with historically observed changes occurring with literacy." (p.144)
{Are writers always writing to capture things exactly as they are? I would say that when that happens it falls within the range of nonfiction, but as writing became an art (and not just a method for replicating life in printed words), I have to believe that through the use of figurative language, writers were leaving cognitive "holes" that they hoped would be filled with thought. What that thought was was reader dependent. But think of poetry. As a poet, the language used can be pretty spartan ("So much depends on the red wheelbarrow"), but I have to imagine William Carlos Williams wanted it the line to read that way. His "wheelbarrow" might be very different from my own "wheelbarrow."}
"[Thus,] the impact of literacy on thought and knowledge should be understood within particular social, cultural, and historical circumstances and practices."

Historically, writing seems to have initially been utilized for economics, social control and religion (and if you are a Marxist, the last two things are really the same, no?). I found it interesting that the Maya also utilized scribes to "mediate" between the gods and the common people-which is very reminiscent of Christianity during the Middle Ages. I found it so culturally different that in India, writing was considered to be for those too dull to remember and that religious learning was oral. Writing also initially had less value among the Greeks than "rhetoric." We tend to often think of learning in China as being very different than Westernized pedagogical methods - often more test-driven. I'm guessing that is because high-stakes testing appears to have been a part of Chinese culture (the imperial civil service examinations) that lasted for over two millenia (p.151). And we think No Child Left Behind can be awful...
Finally, though I knew that the Islamic world was responsible for "keeping" much of the knowledge that was "lost" during the Dark Ages, I don't think I realized just how much: it seems without translations from Greek into Syriac and Arabic, much of what was known in the ancient world about mathematics and medicine would have been lost to time. (Check out the history of the word algebra.) The Islamic world was also where East met West, thus their collections of knowledge were truly the first that were "international" in scope. (p. 155)

Ch. 10
This chapter helped me to situate much of what I know about what it means to be a scholar in the context of history. I found the emergence of the European university fascinating. Though I suspect I should have known it, I was still amazed at just how much control the Vatican exercised over curricula. (Perhaps this explains why my husband took Latin at his Catholic high school - something that has really served him well on all of our vacations, let me tell you...) It also makes total sense that the Reformation could only coincide with the invention of the printing press - it was the first time people were able to draw their own interpretations and inferences from the Bible. It was at this time (15th century) that, "learning became a competitive force that could enhance the status and power of monarchs.." (p. 159)

Skipping forward a few centuries, the idea of writing as a means of documenting the authorship of ideas (1883 Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property and the emergence of patents) was really groundbreaking. (Also, over half of patents currently come from the US.) Moving toward the economies of today, I thought the following quote captured an important central idea from the chapter:
"As modern society has become more dependent on knowledge, the economic value of many sorts of information and the texts that bear them has increased, particularly with the advent of electronic communication and the Internet, so that the purchaser may gain only transient use of the purchased knowledge product, the permanent and authoritative copy of which still resides solely in the possession of the owner." (p. 161) Might this explain why I cannot copy and paste to this blog from a word document? Or am I just slow on the uptake? (Likely the latter.)

Finally, I "got" why people said that the language you study depends on what field you plan to study. (Is German still the language of science? Or am I to believe the text that English is now the official language of scholarship from the mid-20th century forward?) It seems that we are still anchored to the Prussian idea of research and scholarship, so someone can throw the Germans a bone there.