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

Literature I 34

This covariation of literacy with other major changes in life
experience -a pervasive condition in almost all settings- is a
formidable obstacle to research on educational effects [of
literacy]... The attribution to literacy of causal significance in
cognitive development remained, as with Vygotsky, on the
hypothetical level. (Scribner and Cole,1981:10 and 12).

The position that literate cultures have in the written language an
'amplifier' of cognitive capacities and therefore 'push cognitive growth
better, earlier and longer than others' (Greenfield and Bruner,1969) was
challenged by the Important study on Val literacy (Scribner and
Cole,1981), where it was possible for the first time to separate schooling
from literacy, as Vai people had developed their own script which was
learned at home. The conclusion of the study was that literacy per se
does not produce all the cognitive effects generally ascribed to school,
which are the result of a particular kind of literacy.

It is suggested that the main characteristic of school literacy , or
'essayist style' (Scollon and Scollon,1981), is that all the meaning must
reside in the text, independently of its nonlingulstic interpretative
context : it is language which creates its own context for interpreta-
tion. (Olson,1977b). So, the difference between 'text' and 'utterance',
according to Olson, is that in the first meaning is intrinsic to language,
in the latter it is extrinsic, as the listener has access to other
features of the communicative situation (contextual cues and
parallnguistic Information) to interpret the speaker's intentions. This
position has important theoretical consequences for the acquisition of
literacy skills at school, and also for any discussion on oral language,
as it is widely held that its development is a necessary prerequisite for
the learning of literacy. Bruner (1975) had already introduced the
differentiation between 'communicative' and 'analytic' competence, the
latter being typical of the context-free elaboration required by formal
schooling. It is by de-contextuallzlng knowledge that school learning
would promote analytic competence and thus transform the nature of the
thought process. A similar approach is in Donaldson's (1978) distinction
between 'embedded' and 'disembedded' cognitive processes. Cummins based
his distinction between 'Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills' and
'Cognitive-Academic Language Proficiency' (1980) on Olson's position, and

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