Page 187 - Literacy in the New Media Age

176 LITERACY IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE

It may be worth making a small diversion at this point, on the issue of spelling
in English. We all know that English is the possession of many people around
the world, and not just of the English or their near cousins. In as far as spelling
attempts to stay close to the sound-system of the language which is being
‘spelled’, the problems of spelling in a globalising communicational world will
become impossible to manage. Text-messaging is moving, in some discernible
ways, in the direction of solving this problem at one level, both in its likely
increasing use of visual entities, and in its tendencies towards consonantal
spelling – a preference in abbreviations of consonants over vowels. Here
the problems of the relation of sound-shapes and letter-shapes are less immediate
and acute.
And maybe it is best to leave the discussion precisely at this point: at a point
where we can get a glimpse of one tiny yet telling aspect of the likely futures of
literacy, and also at the point where I began the discussion, more or less – with
the profound changes in the social, economic and technological world which in
the end will shape the futures of literacy. However, we are the makers of
meaning, and we can move into that period with a theory that puts us and our
sign-making at the centre – not free to do as we would wish, but not as the victims
of forces beyond our control either. That is the point and the task of theory. That
will need to be the guide of our practices.