Discourses of Power,The Dialectics of Understanding,The Power of Literacy *

Abstract

The study of literacy has recently been made a major focus of attention in socio-, psycho-, and anthropological linguistics. Our understanding of how literacy affects both consciousness and social relations is still enormously vague, though sociolinguists have greatly expanded our knowledge of the nature, forms, and uses of a variety of literacies. They cannot, however, answer the question: Why do particular modes of literacy correlate with particular modes of social organization, cultural form, and political and economic developments? In order to answer this question one must examine the constitution of meanings along with the simultaneous constitution of social relations. They are clearly in a dialectical relationship, at least in some forms of discourse, as is demonstrated through an analysis of a narrative elicited from a highly creative Mexican-American child. But the specifics of that dialectic need to be examined—on both interpersonal and institutional levels—before we can say we are thinking about the relationships of power, communicative practice, and consciousness.