Page 135 - Literacy in the New Media Age

124 LITERACY IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE

Some examples
I make the assumption that texts are the result of implicit or explicit structuring
and planning. Implicit structuring in that the organisation of social systems –
whether in overt interaction and dialogue or in seeming monologue – provides
the overarching structuring frames, both the rules of generic organisation and the
rules of thematic development. Explicit structuring in that it is actually
displayed, whether in the orderly succession of questions and answers in
interviews; or the regular organisation of any one of many genres; of
paragraphing; of topic development handled syntactically; or indeed in the visual
organisation of layout. Punctuation is one means for the overt marking of
conceptual arrangements and dispositions. This marking must be clear enough to
be apprehensible to the hearer, reader or viewer, so that the speaker, writer or
image-maker knows that they can make their ordering communicable. In this
sense, punctuation is for the maker of the message. It marks and ratifies a
meaning-ordering already planned, and it is realised by many means. This is
punctuation as design. But punctuation is also for the listener, reader or viewer.
In as far as listening, reading or viewing represent a willingness on the receiver’s
part to engage with the text of the producer, it is an attempt by the viewer to
enter into productive engagement with the text. Of course this does not exclude
debate and argument with that text, or even severe remaking in the
transformative reception of it, nor does it exclude rejection of the message and of
its conceptual ordering in its entirety.
Punctuation as the framing of an overall organisation, and as the framing of
different kinds of order, is a feature of all texts. It is a necessary condition of
communication. ‘Without framing, no meaning’, we might say. Punctuation in
the narrower sense is the overt, deliberate, appearance of ‘directive markings’ of
this structuring, a guide and instruction to the viewer, reader or hearer towards
recognition, perception and, if things go well, an acceptance by the reader of this
disposition of material and this order.

Speech and writing

The mode of alphabetic writing is peculiar in that – to a significant extent – it
stands in a close relation to the mode of speech. Sometimes it is a near
transliteration, sometimes a translation, at times a transformation and at times a
transduction of speech. In the latter case, writing as a mode is most independent
of speech, whereas in the first case it is in effect the recording of the mode of
speech in the graphic medium of letters. For practised writers, writing exists as a
mode in its own right: there is no question of transliteration or even of
transduction; it is a resource fully present in itself to the writer. Much or perhaps
most writing resides somewhere between the two poles – of writing as translation
or transformation and of writing as an independent mode. Transliteration exists
really only for those who are specialists, who need transliterations for specialist