The recent discussions on the privileging of verbal and written forms of
activities (thinking, learning, displaying learning... ) remind me of
David Olson's favorite topic: the "cognitive consequences of writing"...
one key ref. is his "From Utterance to Text" in Havard Educational
Review; but he's also recently written an interesting article
"reflecting" critically on his bias for writing and his career as a cog.
psychologist all these years... very candid and interesting writing... FYI,
it's in one of the recent issues of Written Communication this year.
Also just for your interest, there's a Chinese myth which goes like this:
when the
mythical legendary Chinese genius invented writing (or "characters"), the
sky rained grains, and the gods and spirits wept... the reason? because
it was expected that with the invention of writing people would become
cunning, unscrupulous, calculating, hurting each other, and would lose
their simple trusting helpful ways... and there would be hunger and famine
because of these... and so the sky rained grains... Interesting
socio-cultural reflection of our distrust of what writing can bring and
tI think Bourdieu would agree with the wisdom of this myth: what better
symbolic weapons there are than... writing... and a certain form of
writing (e.g., academic writing, journal style writing, English
writing... etc., etc....) :-)
Angel
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Angel M.Y. Lin
Doctoral Candidate
Modern Language Centre
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
252 Bloor St. W., Toronto, ON M5S 1V6, Canada
E-Mail: MYLIN who-is-at OISE.ON.CA
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Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When ... we stand face to face in the cyber space? ...
--Adapted from: The Ballad of East and West, Rudyard Kipling
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