Page 155 - Literacy in the New Media Age

144 LITERACY IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE

her or his interest in the phenomenon represented at that moment. It is never
more than that, never a full representation of the object in the world.
Signs are made both in outward production (in writing, in drawing, in gesture
and so on), and are then visible, audible and communicable, and they are also
made in inward production (in reading, in viewing, as much as through all forms
of culturally shaped perception – taste, smell, touch). In (semiotic) principle
there is no difference between inward and outward production; both result in the
making of a sign. In (social) practice there is a vast difference between being
able to make outward representations – and having the means for communicating
them – and not being able to do so, for whatever reason. Outward production
results in signs which are visible, audible and communicable; inward production
results in signs which become visible, audible and so on only when they become
the basis of new signs outwardly produced. These new outwardly produced signs
allow us to make inferences about the shape and the characteristics of the
inwardly produced signs that preceded them.
There are three significant points in this brief excursion into a theory of sign.
The first point is that as the analyst of signs made, whether by a child as in the
example above or by anyone else, I have to treat them as motivated conjunctions
of meaning and form, that is, the form of the sign is the best available indicator
of the meaning which the children wanted to represent. It entails that from the
form of the sign I can make strong inferences about the meaning of the sign.
That is not possible if I regard the sign as an arbitrary relation of form and
meaning. The second point is this: the sign made outwardly (whether by the child
or by the adult) is based on the sign made before, inwardly, as the result of the
‘reading’ made. This sign is therefore the best available evidence and data for a
hypothesis about the shape of the sign made as a result of the reading. It is the
best data we can have for understanding the processes and the effects of reading,
and the same applies to ‘learning’. The third point concerns interest: the shape of
the sign gives me a strong indication of the interest of the maker of the sign, at
the moment of the making of the sign. That of course is invaluable evidence for
the processes of learning, of whatever kind.
With this quick sketch of ‘sign’ in mind, I will now look again at the tiny
example, and ask again what it was that the child had done. Clearly she does not
know the letters of the English alphabet, although I happen to know from many
other instances – some appear below – that she was at that time ‘working’ in some
way with the issue of ‘what is a letter’ – whether through attempts to write her
own name, or to ‘write’ more generally. In order to understand my written model
she has to engage in a task of visual analysis. To do that she needs principles of
analysis, and one of the principles which she adopts, seemingly, is that things
which are joined together physically must belong together as a unit of meaning.
On the basis of this principle she can then produce her sign: it is neither merely or
simply a copy, nor is it an imitation. The sign that she has produced is a
transformation of the original. It is not the original, but it is the result of the
application of principles of analysis to the original to produce a transformation