Shannon Gray

English 413
Dr. Patrick Shaw
28 April 2015
Writings Hand In Human Expansion
Throughout the course of this semester there have been many
occasions in which the various ways that writing has been affected or
influenced by humans have been addressed, debated, and compared.
These influences that change over time are the essence of what James
A. Berlin speaks on throughout both Writing Instruction in NineteenthCentury American Colleges as well as Rhetoric and Reality. He as well
as Jacques Derrida in Of Grammatology, Judith Butler in Undoing
Gender, and all of the other literary theorist discussed in shorter length
this year have each given their opinions on the development of the
written word, its relationship to speech and meaning, where it is
located, and so on.
The ways in which humans use text is a topic that has been hit
on hard, but an influence much less talked about, yet just as important
to recognize, is how writing has written us; Us referring to students,
teachers, cultures, Americans, and human beings as a whole. Humans
are now just as much a product of writing as writing is a product of
humans. The never-ending cycle of development between literacy and
human kind is a topic much broader than the boundaries of any English

department; the ways in which writing writes us touches every corner

of education, knowledge, history, and understanding. Writing writes us
because writing expands us, it magnifies us to a scale that could never
have been reached any other way. Although human beings are the
creators of writing they now are also a reflection of it, a product of their
own invention.
The way in which students learn to write currently is indeed a
type of writing, it is the most formal version, but there are in fact other
forms of writing outside of the various alphabets used across the world.
An understanding of the scope of writing must thus be made before
moving on to the ways in which it writes us. Merriam-Webster defines
what it means to write in many different ways; to make significant
characters or inscriptions; to make a permanent impression of; to form
on a surface with an instrument. The act of writing is not limited to
numbers and letters, symbols and even drawings are also types of
writing and are just as capable of conveying meaning.
It is also important to understand the intertwined relationship
between writing and reading. To read means to be able to look at and
understand the meaning of those various forms of writing. Although
the terms are not synonymous they are still found within each other;
one cannot read without knowing how to write and cannot write
without knowing how to read. So as this paper discusses how writing

writes us it is more accurately discussing how literacy writes us

because of this read-write interdependence.
Lastly, it would be beneficial to understand the difference
between history and prehistory as well as when that switch from one to
the other was made. Heather Whipps explains in her article How
Writing Changed the World that, the presence of written sources
denotes the technical dividing line between what scholars classify as
prehistory versus what they call history, which starts at different times
depending on what part of the world you are studying. There is no
official date that the transfer from prehistory to history was made by
the world because writing and literacy were not adopted by the entire
world at once; many indigenous populations across the world are still
living without it. Although not all cultures have implemented writing
into their ways of communication, those who do have recorded enough
of themselves and those around them to deem the world as overall
being out of prehistory.
While exploring the effects of literacy on contemporary cultures
and hypothesizing about the condition of everyday life that is absent of
any influences of writing and literacy, I repeatedly came across
different works by a man named Jack Goody. Goody is a social
anthropologist that has turned his focus towards the anthropology of
writing and literacy, publishing a shockingly long list of works written
about his discoveries, and it was his book The Domestication of the

Savage Mind that my ideas and arguments seemed to line up with

perfectly. In this book Goody provides readers with his fieldwork
experiences and explains how what he had witnessed shows the
changes in the ways of communicating by the adoption or
development of writing.
It is after consulting this book and taking in the research done by
Goody that I have developed my own set of claims which I will expand
on shortly but boils down to an overall claim that the way in which
writing writes us is through its expansion of human beings. What
human beings are on their own can be and has been both broadened
and heightened by the presence of literacy. This theory is backed not
only by the work of Goody but also by Derrida throughout Of
Grammatology and also within the two works of Berlin.
Writing specifically expands on our ability to communicate and
connect with each other as well as our knowledge capability and
capacity as human beings. Writing was created by people and is
passed on culturally; it has symbolic value and material aspects; and it
is crucial to interaction between people and central to knowledge
creation (Barton and Papen, 4).
The battle over literacy throughout United States history is proof
not only that writing enhances knowledge, but also that intelligence
and social stat us were determined and controlled by the ability to read
and write, specifically when it came to controlling and oppressing

slaves and even freed African Americans. Throughout multiple slave

narratives such as those by Harriet Jacobs and Fredrick Douglass there
is a common association between literacy and at least the most basic
form of freedom. When faced with the threat of whipping or
imprisonment for teaching other slaves to write or read, the ability was
greatly cherished because it was attained by so few.
It is thanks to the late mistress if Harriet Jacobs that she became
one of those select few. While I was with her, she taught me to read
and spell; and for this privilege, which so rarely falls to the lot of a
slave, I bless her memory (Jacobs, 9). It makes complete sense why
literacy was cherished so much. When her next owner discovered that
she could read, his entire demeanor changed; he held his tongue more
often and spoke to her in a less threatening manner. Her ability to read
and write, to communicate and comprehend the same as him, provided
her and several other slaves with a new strength through education; a
strength that shook the ranks. Throughout her narrative, it is her
literacy that provides the most for her and that she then tries to
provide for others. From party invitations to frequent letters
communicating with both white and black correspondents, Harriet
Jacobss ability to read and write provided her with invaluable
knowledge; it truly was the first step towards freedom.
Writing has a much greater effects on knowledge and
understanding than just slave narratives. With the ability to keep

written records, knowledge of human beings has gone from extend

family and community members at best to a detailed lineage of
ancestors and members of a community who may have otherwise been
lost in memory. The best metaphor for this would be typing on a
computer without any save function. It is possible to accumulate quite
a bit of information on that computer, but once it shuts off there is no
way to recover that information; it is lost. Being able to save such
information has been beyond beneficial both with the accumulation of
knowledge and the preservation of history. Goody explains the
historical difference between cultures with written history versus those
with oral history saying that written history is tied to the use of
documentary material while oral histories are filled with mythology,
in the definition of myth, there is a sense in which this concept often
involves a backward look at that which is either untrue or unverifiable
(Goody, 14).
Stemming from the way in which writing writes us through
knowledge of the past, it also writes us and determines who we are in
society because of the fact that it is the base of Americas education
system. James Berlin spends the entirety of his two books studying the
upmost levels of American schooling and maps out various writing
instruction trends in colleges throughout the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, but even his scope is just a fragment of the influences of
writing on education.

Berlins focus in Rhetoric and Reality, which covers writing

instruction in the twentieth century, on the three major approaches to
education and writing instruction, which are Current Traditional
Rhetoric, the Rhetoric of Liberal Culture, and Transactional Rhetoric.
Current-Traditional Rhetoric, which caters to the middle class, focuses
on the superficial correctness of writing and forms of discourse; the
Rhetoric of Liberal Culture, an exclusive aristocratic approach, focused
on the development of creativity and expressiveness; and
Transactional Rhetoric, which fixated on the development of
Democracy, emphasized the social aspects of writing and believed it to
be a medium for discussion or dialogue.
Although all are very different in their approaches to writing and
how it should be taught, each of them comments in one way or
another on the emphasis put on written methods of evaluation, such as
tests and essay exams, and all mention that college writing courses
focused on correctness to the neglect of effectiveness (Berlin, 82). Not
every approach agrees in this focus, but they do all acknowledge that
it is there. And though it may be argued that having such a strong
reliance on writing and reading comprehension can be detrimental
because of how impersonal and distant written word is compared to
spoke language, there are many more benefits than disadvantages to
having physical displays of knowledge.

Though speech is a much more personal interaction due to the

fact that both parties must be present throughout the duration of the
discussion, it is also extremely superficial. Verbal assessments are
short-lived demonstrations of talent. Writing, on the other hand, has
the ability to reach further and resonate longer than speech is able to.
Derrida explains in Of Grammatlogy that writing continues the
language of action. It is at the moment that the social distance, which
had led gesture to speech, increases to the point of becoming absent,
that writing becomes necessary. From then on, writing has the function
of reaching subjects who are not only distant but outside the entire
field of vision and beyond earshot (Derrida, 281).
What Derrida describes above is the evolution of communication
that has developed as man has extended further and further outward.
First there were gestures, but this for was only useful for close range
communication and relied on eyesight. Once speech was developed
range grew significantly because of the distance that sound could be
projected, but even this form was limiting humans through its
requirement to be present and alert. Conquering communication
despite physical absence was the next evolutionary step in expanding
the distance of communication.
Writing also expands upon the amount of time in which
something can be received. Both speech and gestures are instant
actions; they only exist within the moment that they are delivered.

Goody explains, writing arrests the flow of oral converse so that one
can compare side by side utterances that have been made at different
times and at different places (Goodie, 12). This preservation of
meaning across time is quite possibly the most advocated benefit to
writing, and all three authors as well as linguists and scholars have
praised it across time. It is the ability to revisit arguments made within
a written text and view it from all angles that creates a much greater
potation for both criticism and deeper understanding, all of which could
be beneficial to the author.
Viewing writing as a theory rather than an object or entity has
been one of the most difficult requirements of this semester, but it has
also allowed for an inspection of writing and rhetoric, both in abstract
and physical form, that has established a greater understanding of
both our effect on writing and writings effect on us. My claim that
writing writes us by expanding on what human beings were previously
capable of is further proven by Goodys statement that the written
word does not replace speech, any more than speech replaces gesture.
But it adds an important dimension to much social action (15), and
the fact that my views align with not only his but also the views of
Derrida and Berlin seems to be a confirmation of the ability that writing
has to influence and guide both contemporary and preceding cultures.

Works Cited
Barton, David, and Uta Papen. The Anthropology of Writing:
Understanding Textually Mediated Worlds. London: Continuum,
2010. ProQuest Ebrary. Web. 24 Apr. 2015.
Berlin, James A. Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American
Colleges, 1900-1985. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1987.
Print.
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP,
1976. Print.
"Dictionary." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 27 Apr.
2015.
Goody, Jack. The Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1988. Print.
Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Mineola, NY:
Dover Publications, 2001. Pearson Higher Education. Pearson
Education. Web. 25 Apr. 2015.
Whipps, Heather. "How Writing Changed the World." LiveScience.
TechMedia Network, 10 Feb. 2008. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.