Chapter 2: How is writing a political, social, cultural, historical activity?

In the last half of my composition theory class we looked at how recent theory seems to be breaking down what it means to be "literate" most of the articles we read asserted that literacy is defined by culture. I've always been fascinated by the difficulty of defining literacy. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary literacy is the ability to read and write. The second definition states literacy is knowledge that relates to a specified subject. We had a class discussion about what counts as literacy. Someone brought up their cousin who is a blacksmith, we agreed as a class that knowing how to make things from scratch was a kind of literacy none of us possessed.  Since writing is the first technology, the history of the act is apparent. The political side of writing is harder to see but one article in particular made it easy to see.

 Unpacking Literacy described how the Vai  people of Liberia learned how to read and write. The Vai have their very own phonetic writing system, called the Vai Script. The men in their society learn it informally. Arabic script and English script is taught in a slightly different matter, the scripts all have different uses. The Vai script is used locally, for personal letters and stuff of that sort. The Arabic script is used for religious purposes and English script is used for political purposes. Just having the categories in place shows how writing can be political and cultural. Arabic and English only seem to have one purpose in Vai culture. A more relatable example is the workplace.  In the workplace,employers expect their employees to write in a formal tone. There are words that are deemed too colloquial for work. It would be surprising to the word "ain't" in a piece that is supposed to be formal. In our society having good writing skills is a sign of good education, which is a sign of class. Everything fits together. We live in a culture where writing well is valued.