Re: Lteter Oerdr?

From: David Preiss (david.preiss@yale.edu)
Date: Mon Sep 22 2003 - 16:49:32 PDT


Following up on the debate on lteter oedr, as I am not an expert on the
phonics/whole language debate I was wondering whether somebody could
provide some information regarding how that debate generalize to languages
other than English and where the relation between sounds and letters is more
consistent (e.g. Spanish). Is the issue of phonics still relevant there?
What about writing systems that are not alphabetical?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Judith Vera Diamondstone" <JDiamondstone@Clarku.edu>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 22, 2003 8:07 AM
Subject: RE: Lteter Oerdr?

> Thanks for this, Jay & the Roy Haris reference.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jay Lemke
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Sent: 9/21/2003 11:51 PM
> Subject: Re: Lteter Oerdr?
>
>
> It was fun reading all those fractured orthographies ... and the
> discussion
> of how, depending on language and writing system, we read by combining
> "bottom up" (orthographic-phonological) and "top-down" (genre, register,
>
> discourse, intertextual) strategies.
>
> Perhaps also worth noting that how we learn to read, how we read
> initially
> unfamiliar words and text, and how we read after long practice and on
> familiar ground, are all pretty obviously very different practices,
> including at the neurological level. No doubt also somewhat different
> depending on language and writing system, and on schooled practices and
> some aspects of the general culture of reading (e.g. its relation to an
> oral tradition, the sacredness of texts, the cultural salience of
> accuracy,
> etc.).
>
> I happen to be teaching a course at the moment that deals with changing
> definitions of literacy, reading, writing, etc. and in part with what it
>
> means to read something that counts as writing. An interesting thought
> in
> this vein is that "a reading" of a text has not historically always, or
> perhaps even most often, meant a verbatim recitation word-for-word, but
> rather a performance that counts in a community as rendering the
> culturally
> important aspects of the meaning of the text, even when we have to fill
> in
> words not there, gloss as we read, correct errors in print, interpret
> ambiguities, and make a "good reading", regardless of the marks on the
> page.
>
> Roy Harris (Oxford, linguistics), who has perhaps thought and written
> more
> on these matters than anyone in the last decade or two (Signs of Writing
> is
> the best of his books on the subject, I think) makes a very good case
> that
> in general writing is NOT a notation of speech, but rather a prompt that
> we
> use to produce a good performance of the sense of the text. At the
> moment,
> and in some quarters of one culture, "good" has come to mean a rather
> limited and literalist verbatim-ism. I think there are excellent reasons
> to
> reject that "fundamentalist" position as naive and limiting
> intellectually.
> It has, unfortunately, made common cause with both religious textual
> fundamentalism (Christian mainly, I don't know about Muslim) and with
> the
> politics of recent linguistics, which turned away from a view of the
> autonomy of written language to a fetishism of oral language as
> fundamental. Harris knows that history very well and points to the
> blinders
> it has put on our current view of literacy. (For the links to religious
> textualism, see David Olson's _The World on Paper_.)
>
> I don't think one can properly pose questions about the relationship
> between orthographic-phonological and discursive-semantic reading
> practices
> outside some fairly sophisticated view of what defines "a reading" of a
> text in a particular community for a particular purpose. Sometimes
> writing
> is a notation for speech. But not usually.
>
> JAY.
>
>
>
>
> At 06:10 PM 9/19/2003 -0400, you wrote:
> >I just don't get it. I tried scrambling the following abstract and it
> did
> >not
> >help to make sense of it at all:
> >
> >"Txet-only CMC has been cialmed to be iiaecotrtalnlny inenocerht due to
> >laitnomtiis imeposd by mengiassg sstymes on trun-tnkaig and rfceeenre,
> yet
> >its ptploauriy cotniunes to grow. In an amtetpt to roeslve this
> aapnrpet
> >pdaraox, this sutdy evueaatls the cerechone of ctpouemr-meaitedd
> itocaienrtn
> >by sivruenyg resaecrh on csors-turn cronechee. The rteslus revael a
> high
> >deerge of dtseirpud adjenaccy, ovalepnpirg egnhxaecs, and tpioc dcaey.
> Two
> >eitnopalxans are ppsrooed to aocucnt for the prtiplouay of CMC diepste
> its
> >rlateive iecreconhne: the atbliiy of usres to aapdt to the miuedm, and
> the
> >aaevtngads of lonoseed cochneree for hgeeenthid itaetiicvntry and
> luagnage
> >paly."
>
>
> Jay Lemke
> Professor
> University of Michigan
> School of Education
> 610 East University
> Ann Arbor, MI 48104
>
> Tel. 734-763-9276
> Email. JayLemke@UMich.edu
> Website. www.umich.edu/~jaylemke



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