Until writing, language was still close to its users and bore their mark. It was their voice, and their seeing, hearing, and touching. With writing, language was objectified, freed from the subject and the senses. The development towards written language, and from written language to initially limited and then generalized literacy, paralleled the evolution from satisfying immediate needs (the circular relation) to extending and increasing demand (the linear function) of a mediated nature. The difference between needs related to survival and needs that are no longer a matter of survival but of social status (power, ego, fear, pleasure, incipient forms of conviction, etc.) is represented through language, itself seen as part of the continuous self-constitution of the human being in a particular pragmatic framework.
The alienation of immediacy
The term alienation requires a short explanation. Generally, it is used to describe the estrangement, through work, of human beings from the object of their effort. Awareness of having one's life turned into products, which then appear to those who made them as entities in themselves, open to anybody to appropriate them in the market, is an expression of alienation. There are quite a number of other descriptions, but basically, alienation is a process of having something that is part of us (our bodies, thoughts, work, feelings, beliefs, etc.) revealed as foreign. Rooting the explanation of this very significant process of alienation (and of the concept representing it in language) in the establishment and use of signs, makes possible the understanding of its pragmatic implications.
Awareness of signs is awareness of the difference between who we are and how we express our identity. In the case of signs representing some object (the drawing of the object or of the person, the name, social security number, passport, etc.), the difference between what is represented and the representation is as much an issue of appropriateness (why we call a table table or a certain woman Mary) as it is one of alienation. The conscious use of signs most probably results from the observation people make that their thoughts, feelings, or questions are almost always imperfectly expressed. Two things happen, probably at the same time: 1.
No longer dealing directly with the object, or intended action, but with its representation, makes it more difficult to share with others experiences pertinent to the object. 2.
The interpretation being no longer one of the direct object, or the intended action, but of its representation, it leads to new experiences, and thus associations-some confusing, and others quite stimulating. The image was still close to the object; the confusion regarded actions. Writing is remote from objects, though actions can be better described since differentiation of time is much easier. We know by now that moving images, or sequences of photographs of the action, are even better for this purpose.
With the written word, even in the most primitive use of it, events become the object of record. Relations, as well as reciprocal commitments among community members, can also be put in the records. Norms can be established and imposed. A fundamental change, resulting from the increased productivity of the newly settled communities, is accounted for in writing. People no longer deal with work in order to live (in order to survive, actually), but with life dedicated to work. Writing, more than previously used signs (sounds, images, movements, colors), estranges human beings from the environment and from themselves. Some feelings (joy, sadness), some attitudes (anger, mistrust) become signs and, once expressed, can be written down (e.g., in letters, wills). In order to be shared, thoughts go through the same process, and so does everything else pertaining to life, activity, change, illness, love, and death.
It was stated many times that writing and the settlement of human beings are related. So are writing and the exchange of goods, as well as what will become known as labor division. While the use of verbal language makes possible the differentiation of human praxis, the use of written language requires the division between physical and non-physical work. Writing requires skills, such as those needed for using a stylus to engrave in wax or clay, quill on parchment, later the art of calligraphy. It implies knowledge of language and of its rules of grammar and spelling. There is a great difference between writing skills and the skills needed for processing animal skins, meat, various agricultural products, and raw materials. The social status of scribes proves only that this difference was duly acknowledged. It should be added here that the few who mastered writing were also the few who mastered reading. Nevertheless, some historic reference points to the contrary: in the 13th century, non-reading subjects were used as scribes because the accuracy of their undisturbed copying was better than that of those who read. This reference is echoed today in the use of non-English speaking operators to key-in texts, i.e., to transfer accumulated records into digital databases. And while the number of readers increased continuously, the number of writers, lending their hands as scribes to real writers, remained small for many centuries.
Literacy started as an elitist overhead expenditure in primitive economies, became an elitist occupation surrounded by prejudices and superstition, expanded after technological progress (however rudimentary) facilitated its dissemination, and was finally validated in the marketplace as a prerequisite for the higher efficiency of the industrial age. Primitive barter did not rely on and did not require the written word, although barter continued even after the place of written language became secure. In barter, people interact by exchanging whatever they produce in order to fulfill their immediate needs within a diversified production.
The alienation peculiar to barter and the alienation characteristic of a market relying on the mediating function of written language are far from being one and the same. In short, exchanging is fundamentally different from selling and buying. Products to be exchanged still bear the mark of those who sweat to produce them. Products to be sold become impersonal; their only identity is the need they might satisfy or sometimes generate. Myth, as a set of practical programs for a limited number of local human experiences, no longer satisfied exigencies of a community diversifying its experience and interacting with communities living in different environments. This contrast of market forms characteristic of orality and of incipient writing is related to the contrast between myth transmitted orally and mythology, associated with the experience of writing. Language in its written form appeared as a sui generis social memory, as potential history.