Print language, literature culture

The technology writing and print technology have over time Not only changed
the medium of language use, but irrevocably Changed our way 0f thinking and
thinking about culture. This Chapter will deal with issues of text, power, and the
cultural Politics of literacy.
Written language, textual culture
We first need to take an historical perspective on the way Technology has
affected the relationship of language and culture The invention of writing
around 3000 BC transformed oral Tradition, transmitted through storytelling,
bardic epics, mythical Re-enactments and performances, into textual tradition,
handed down by scribes. The culture of the text, as exemplified in the Chinese
scribal culture, passed on its wisdom not through Reading, but through the
faithful copying of texts. It was through the rewriting of fixed texts in ones own
handwriting that the Truths of the ancestors got embodied anew into new
generations. Copying texts was the major way of getting at the texts meaning,
and of obtaining the social prestige that came with a literate Education.
The culture of the text and its respect for and obedience to Textual authority
was also central to the Judaic and early Christian traditions. In these cultures,
rev elation was to take place through commentary, exegesis, and translation.
The implication was that through the study and interpretation of the sacred
texts it would be possible to recover the original truths dispensed in oral Form
by god, angels, and the prophets. The simultaneous desirability and possibility
of the goal have been the subject of many a scholars concern. It was the
ultimate focus of the Kabbalah, a twelfth-century school of Jewish mysticism
named after the Hebrew term for literacy tradition. What kabbalists looked for
in the bible was not primarily philosophical ideas, but a symbolic description of
the hidden process of divine life. Viewing written language itself as a microrepresentation of the universe,
Kabbalists built an elaborate system of
meanings based on numbers and the letters of the Hebrew alphabet , in an
effort to accede to the unwritten secrets of the universe .So , for example the
four letters of the Hebrew name of God, Yod hi vav he (yabiveb), have in
Hebrew the numerical value forty-five from their position in the alphabet , as
does the world Adam . From this linguistic fact, Kabbalists dew the conclusion
that God is in fact Adam .The God who can be apprehended by man is himself,
they claimed the first Man. One can readily see why the Catholic Church
condemned the Kabbalah as a heresy.
Textual cultures illustrate the dilemma represented by the invention of writing.
As we saw in Chapter I, writing permits record keeping and thus can be an aid
to memory; by fixing the fluidity of speech, it makes traditions into scripture,
which can then be easily codified and made into a norm, a Conon, or a law. But

writing, uprooted from its original context through the passing of time and
through its dissemination in space, increases also the absurdity of the quest for
the one true original meaning. Ancient text can only be understood though
the multiple meanings given to them by latter-day commentators, exegetes
translators. Even legal documents, that try to control and legislate peoples
lives, have to be re-interpreted a new for every particular case.

KRAMSCH. C. (1998, pp.53-54) language and culture. Oxford New York City.
Series Editor H. G. Widdowson.