Alphabetic writing annihilates this frame of experience based on resemblance. Unless time is specifically given, or coordinates in space intentionally expressed, time and space tend to be assimilated in the text, and more deeply in the grammar. It is a different communication, mediated by abstract entities whose relation to experience is, in turn, the result of numerous substitutions, the record of which is not at the disposal of the reader. Between tell in English and the root tal (or dal) in proto-language (with the literal meaning of tongue), there is a whole experiential sequence available only implicitly in the language. In the nostratic phylum (root of many languages, the Indo- European among them), luba stands for thirst; the English love and the German Liebe seem to derive from it, although when we think of love we do not associate it with the physical experience of thirst.
Clues in written language are clues to language first of all, and only afterwards clues to human experience. Accordingly, reading a text requires an elaborate cognitive reconstruction of the experience expressed, and probably a never-ending questioning of the appropriateness of its understanding. When a text is read, there is nobody to be questioned, nobody to actively understand the understanding, to challenge it. The author exists in the text, as a projection, to the extent that the author exists in the manufactured objects we buy in order to use (glasses to drink water, chairs to sit on), or in whose production we participate in some way. After all, each text is a reality on paper, or on other means of storage and display. Clues can be derived from names of writers and from historic knowledge. What cannot be derived is the reciprocal exchange which goes on during conversation, the cooperative effort under circumstances of co- presence.
Regardless of the degree of complexity, the interactive component of orality cannot be maintained in writing. This points to an intrinsic limitation relevant to our attempt to find out why literacy does not satisfy expectations characteristic of practical experiences requiring interactivity. The metaphoric use of interactivity, as it is practiced to express an animistic attitude according to which, for instance, the text is alive, and we interact with it in reading, interpreting, and understanding it, addresses a different issue. Difficulties in language understanding can be overcome, but not in the mechanical effort of improving language skills by learning 50 more words or studying a chapter in grammar. Rather, one has to build background knowledge through extending the experience (practical, emotional, theoretical, etc.) on which the knowledge to be shared relies.
But once we proceed in this direction, we step out from the unifying framework of literacy, within which the diversity of experiences is reduced to the experience of writing, reading, and speaking. When this reduction is no longer possible-as we experience more and more under the new conditions of existence-understanding language becomes more and more difficult. At the same time, the result of understanding becomes less and less significant for our self-constitution in human experiences. If no other example comes to mind, the reader should reflect upon the many volumes that accompany the software you've bought in recent years. Their language is kept simple, but they are still difficult to comprehend. Once comprehended, the pay-off is slim. This is why the illiterate strategy of integrating on-line the instructions one needs to work with software is replacing literate documentation. These instructions can be reduced to graphic representations or simple animations. The framework is specialization, for instance, in providing instructions in a form adequate to the task. Within specialized experience, even writing and reading are subject to specialization. Literacy turns into yet another distinct form of human praxis instead of remaining its common denominator.
Writing, in this context, makes it clear that language is not enough for understanding a text. Under our own scrutiny, writing becomes a form of praxis in itself, contributing to the general fragmentation of society, not to its unification. This happens insofar as specialized writing becomes part of the general trend towards specialization and generates specialized reading. Some explanation is necessary.
Even when writers strive to adapt their language to a specific readership, the result is only partially successful, precisely because the experiences constituted in writing are disjoint. Indeed, the practical experience to be shared, and the subsequent practical experience of writing are different, pertinent to domains not reducible to each other. Sometimes the writer falls captive to the language (that very specialized subset of language adapted to a specific field of knowledge) and mimics natural discourse by observing grammar and rhetoric devices. Other times, the writer translates, or explains, as in popular magazines on physics, genetics, arts, psychology. Within this type of interpretive discourse either details are left out, or more details are added, with the intention of broadening the common base. Expressive devices, from simple comparisons (which should bridge different backgrounds) to metaphors, expose readers to a new level of experiences. Even if readers know what comparisons are and how metaphors work, they still cannot compensate for the unshared part of experience, with whose help a text makes sense. A legal brief, a military text, an investment analysis, the evaluation of a computer program are examples in this sense. The language they are written in looks like English. But they refer to experiences that a lawyer, or military officer, or broker, or computer programmer is likely to be familiar with.
Writers, speakers, readers, and listeners are aware of the adjustments required to comprehend these and many other types of documents. While a direct conversation, for which time spent with others is required, can be a frame for adjustment, a printed page is definitely less so. The reader can, at best, transmit a reaction in writing, or write to request supplementary explanation, that is, to maintain the spirit of conversation. The experience of writing and reading is becoming less a general experience or cultural identifier, and more a specialized activity. Writing can be read by machines. In order to serve the blind, such machines read instructions, newspaper articles, and captions accompanying video images. The synthetic voice, as much as a synthetic eye or nose, a syntactic touch-sensitive device, or taste translator, operates in a realm devoid of the life that went into the text (image, odor, texture, taste) and which was supposed to be contributed by the reader (viewer, smeller, toucher, taster).
Literacy, projected as a universal and permanent medium for expression, communication, and signification, nourished a certain romanticism or democracy of art, politics, and science. It embodied an axiomatic system: since everybody should speak, write, and read, everybody can and should speak, write, and read; everybody can and should appreciate poetry, participate in political life, understand science. This was indeed relatively true when poetry, politics, and science were, to a certain degree, direct forms of human praxis with levels of efficiency appropriate to the scale of human activity constituted in linear, homogeneous practical experiences. Now that the scale changed, dynamics accelerated, mediation increased, and non-linearity is accepted, we face a new situation. Paradoxically, the poet, the speech-writer, and the science-writer not only fail to address everybody, but they, as part and result of the mechanism of labor division, also contribute to the generation of partially literate human beings. In other words, they contribute to the fragmentation of society, although they are all devoted (some passionately) to the cause of its unity. In reaction to claims that literacy carried through time, a general deconstructionist attitude challenges the permanency of philosophical tractate, of scientific systems, of mathematics, political discourse and, probably more than anything else, of literature. The method applied is coherent: make evident the mechanisms used to create the illusion of permanence and truth. Texts thus appear as means to an end that does not directly count. What results is an account of the technology of expression, embraced by all who grew skeptical of the universality of science, politics and literature. When each sign (independent of the subject) becomes its own reference, and the experience it embodies is, strictly speaking, that of its making, the deconstructionist project reaches the climax. Nike's advertisement is not about sneakers, even less about the celebrities who wear them. It is a rather hermetic self-referential experience. Its understanding, however, is based on the fast-changing experience of revealing one's illiterate identity.
Words about images
The written, as we know, almost constantly appeared together with other referential systems, especially images. In this respect, a question regarding what we understand when we understand language is whether images can be used as an aid to understanding texts. Doubtless, pictures (at least some of them) are, by their cognitive attributes, better bearers of interpretation clues than are some words or writing devices. Images, more so than texts, can stand in for the absent writer. To the extent that they follow conventions of reality, pictures can help the individual reconstitute, at least partially, the frame of time and space, or one of the two. However, this represents only one side of the issue. The other side reveals that images are not always the best conveyors of information, and that what we gain by using them comes at a cost in understanding, clarity, or context dependence.