Construction of Conception: Viewpoints of a Literate

Goody's article once again brings up the notion of writing as a technology - something that is not inherent to human cognition, but a tool used to externalize our incomparable and extremely complex human trait - intellect.  Although it seems a superfluous demonstration of the list as an extension of this tool, Goody uses the list to illustrate why oral and "literate" (the definition of which can be extended to encompass both, but in Goody's article seems to be used only as a reference to cultures with writing systems) cultures.  In a nutshell, Goody states that members of the latter group view the world in a completely different way than those who cannot conceptualize the world in terms of "lists".  Us "literate" folk are constantly creating for ourselves lists of the items around us into definite binaries, categorizing tables as furniture, mugs as dishes, dogs as pets, trees as plants and so forth.  It is absolutely impossible for me, as a member of this culture who has been educated with the "text-lists" of the classroom, to even begin to see the world without putting tomatoes in the fruit category and shampoo into that of toiletries.  My house is an incarnate shopping list.

So, this brings to mind the question of how I might view and, consequently, conceptualize my world if I were not a "literate" person.  Would I not see it in as analytical a sense?  Would I lack critical thinking skills?  If it were not for listing, would man not have made it to the moon or theorized physics or philosophy?

These questions are raised again in Scribner and Cole's article, for they explore the link between literacy and "intellectual performance."  Their study of the Vai (a people of northwestern Liberia who have a phonetic writing system sans influence from the Arabic and Roman alphabets) reveals that literacy does not appear to necessarily affect cognitive skills.  Sadly, their findings lead to their conclusion that writing (outside of schools situations) is not as valuable a social practice as we (Americans and westerners) have always seemed to believe.  However, the article does not delve into what differences school writing and pure social writing have on "general mental abilities," which is, I think, the big factor.  Scribner and Cole take great pains to avoid "the confounding influence of schooling," and so seem to answer the bigger question: analytical writing (the "essay" writing of schools) leads to stronger mental abilities, not just simply knowing how to transcribe object of the world to object on the page.  Transcription of thought forces one to slow down, tear apart, and reconstruct the thought, thus leading to a multifaceted and deeper conception of the thought.  The artist who paints from memory sees beyond the signified.  The author sees beyond the signifier.