Discourse Patterns in First Language Use at Hcme and Second Language Learning at School: an Ethnographic Approach

Literature / 33

2.2 Oral language and Literacy

2.2.1 Literacy and cognitive processes

Oral and written language are different in many ways: it is claimed that
written language requires conscious learning, often in specialized
institutions, implies a detachment of the writer from his product, gives
as result the permanency of text and accuracy in the reproduction of
knowledge, and requires for its production a transformation of text
through decontextualization <Goody,1968; Olson,1977a).

The consequences of literacy on the thought processes have been the
subject of many investigations, and among the first was that of Luria and
Vygotsky in the '30s: the purpose of their expedition to Central Asia
was to determine how changes in cultural conditions (mainly literacy) had
affected intellectual functions (Luria,1976; Schubert,1983; Scribner and
Cole,1981). Comparing поп-literate farmers with other residents of the
same villages with either minimal or full literacy on reasoning tasks, it
was found that the first group tended to solve the problems in a
concrete, context-bound way, while the literate group was more responsive
to the conceptual and logical relationships in finding the solution, the
minimally literate falling in between. According to Luria, his results
confirmed Vygotsky's theories about sociocultural changes being the basis
for the development of higher mental functions (see 2.3.2); however,
recent advances in the ethnography of literacy activities point to
methodological shortcomings (Cole,1985a:151). Luria's study also showed
that it is impossible to disentangle literacy from other factors like
schooling and changed socio-economic conditions. A similar investigation
was conducted decades later by Greenfield (1972) in Senegal, with similar
results but also with the same basic problem:

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