{"id":1266,"date":"2010-12-13T22:00:04","date_gmt":"2010-12-13T20:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=1266"},"modified":"2010-11-23T13:05:27","modified_gmt":"2010-11-23T11:05:27","slug":"rationality-and-the-literate-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=1266","title":{"rendered":"Rationality and the literate mind"},"content":{"rendered":"
Rationality and the literate mind<\/strong>. By Roy Harris.<\/strong> New York: Routledge, 2009. Pp. xiv, 190. ISBN 9780415999014. $128 (Hb).<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Dennis Ryan<\/strong>, Raleigh, NC<\/p>\n

Recent discoveries of neuroscience, especially regarding the brain\u2019s plasticity, have rekindled old debates about language and mind and their implications for literacy, including the possibility that our computer and digital age can change how people think. So saying, Roy Harris embarks on an investigation of reason and literacy in which he makes two claims: (i) how one conceives of rationality depends upon one\u2019s language viewpoint, and (ii) language viewpoints differ in literate and preliterate societies. For H, this inquiry is fraught with social, moral, and political implications that go to the heart of problems of language and meaning.<\/p>\n

Ch. 1, \u2018On rationality, the mind and scriptism\u2019 (1\u201316), traces debates about mind from neuroscience to philosophy and behavioral psychology. H notes the prestige accorded to writing in the West and the general belief that written language is superior to spoken language\u2014a pro-writing bias he terms \u2018scriptism\u2019. Ch. 2, \u2018The primitive mind revisited\u2019 (17\u201329), looks at nineteenth century anthropologists and leading figures in intellectual history who subscribed to a belief in a primitive mind different in kind, or graduated differently, from the modern mind. Ch. 3, \u2018Logicality and prelogicality\u2019 (31\u201343), looks at anthropologists Lucien Levy-Bruhl and Alexander Luria, both of whom promoted the notion of a primitive mind.<\/p>\n

Ch. 4, \u2018Reason and primitive languages\u2019 (44\u201360), discusses the classification of grammatical categories within Western languages due in part, to the tendency of nineteenth century comparative philologists to follow the lead of earlier European grammarians. Ch. 5, \u2018The great divide\u2019 (61\u201378), looks at what anthropologists conceived of as the gulf between literate and preliterate societies; however, as H asks, \u2018[W]hat, if any, is the connexion between being able to reason and being able to write?\u2019 (61). Ch. 6, \u2018Aristotle\u2019s language myth\u2019 (79\u201394), surveys Aristotle\u2019s Organon, the compendium of his work on logic, to better understand his theory of communication. Aristotle had developed a system of logic that was deeply flawed from the outset because it depended upon accepting a simple, transparent view of language to refer to the physical world\u2014this is the \u2018language myth\u2019.<\/p>\n

Ch. 7, \u2018Logic and the tyranny of the alphabet\u2019 (95\u2013109), discusses the constraints Aristotle imposed on the systematic development of his logic based on his \u2018language myth\u2019. Ch. 8, \u2018Literacy and numeracy\u2019 (110\u201324), examines mathematical reasoning, not addressed by Aristotle anywhere in the Organon. Ch. 9, \u2018Interlude: Constructing a language-game\u2019 (125\u201333), discusses the role of \u2018operational discriminations\u2019, i.e. the formulation of concepts in language operations, in a controlled language game H names Constructionese.<\/p>\n

Ch. 10, \u2018The literate revolution and its consequences\u2019 (134\u201346), reintroduces readers to how writing and its institutionalization profoundly changed the way we think. Ch. 11, \u2018The fallout from literacy\u2019 (147\u201359), looks at our post-literate era in which television, calculators, and computers have replaced written language as the main sources of information. Ch. 12, \u2018Epilogue: Rethinking rationality\u2019 (160\u201377), offers an alternative view of reasoning, an integrationist, semiotic one, that challenges the received opinion of logicians commencing with Aristotle.<\/p>\n

Rationality and the literate mind is one of the most important books ever written on logic and literacy. As a theory of applied logic, it looks at logic and language use in social interaction to dissolve misconceptions older than Aristotle concerning logic and literacy. Its implications for language learning are vast and profound. I would criticize H\u2019s discrediting historical and psychoanalytic arguments for words as evolutionary semantic components that affect and effect thought and behavior. I would also question certain of H\u2019s assumptions about Aristotle\u2019s use of classical Greek in formulating the syllogism that issue from a language and linguistic viewpoint separated from Aristotle\u2019s by more than 2,000 years. These points notwithstanding, H has composed a major work that should attract the attention of scholars working in many disciplines beyond logic, linguistics, and education.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rationality and the literate mind. By Roy Harris. New York: Routledge, 2009. Pp. xiv, 190. ISBN 9780415999014. $128 (Hb). Reviewed by Dennis Ryan, Raleigh, NC Recent discoveries of neuroscience, especially regarding the brain\u2019s plasticity, have rekindled old debates about language and mind and their implications for literacy, including the possibility that our computer and digital […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1266"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1266"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1267,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1266\/revisions\/1267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}