Chapter 1
What Is Literacy?

Introduction

In this chapter, we present an account of the evolution of the concept of literacy in human history. We examine the concept in connection with three major historical periods involving social processes over approximately our 100,000 years of existence as a species (Kalantzis & Cope, 2006). First, we explore how humans communicated before the advent of writing as we know it. Next, we consider the profound effects that the development of writing and print literacy exercised on human societies, including the establishment of standardized meanings and the emergence of hierarchical social structures. This is followed by an exploration of the digital age, where electronic technologies for creating and distributing meaning-most recently exemplified by generative artificial intelligence (henceforth, GenAI)-have revolutionized traditional understandings of literacy, highlighting the capacity to produce and interpret meaning across diverse formats. The goal is to illuminate how understandings of communication and literacy have consistently adapted to technological advancements and societal shifts, shaping the ways in which people make meaning, learn, and interact with the world. The chapter ends with a glossary of terms useful for the understanding of GenAI, as well as suggestions for further research, reflection, and action.

Before Writing: First Languages

Human beings are inherently global creatures. From the moment we emerged as a species, we became the first sentient beings to inhabit virtually every part of the Earth. This expansion occurred during the first 95,000 years of our existence and was driven by the speakers of what we call first languages-Indigenous languages (and cultures) that originally represented and communicated meanings without an alphabetical or character-based writing system. Starting from sub-Saharan Africa, an initially small population eventually spread across the globe. We then evolved into different peoples with different languages, largely due to the relative isolation of one tribe from another, resulting in language divergence over time (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 A timeline of human systems of meaning.

However, this divergence is only part of the story. We suggest that the differentiation of languages during this period of human history was a more integral and systematic process than merely the result of accidental drift and isolation. First languages, we argue, were specially designed to differ, often in ways that are difficult for us to understand today. The result was an enormous number of languages for a species that, until recently, had a relatively small population.

Indeed, the diversity of language forms among first languages is nothing short of staggering, demonstrating the vast capacity of humans to invent meanings. The rich, sophisticated character of these first systems of oral and multimodal communication can still be observed today in Indigenous communities around the world. Consider, for example, Yol?u Matha, a first language of northeastern Australia. Among its thousand or so speakers, people speak various forms of language, including baby language, adult language, women's language, old men's sacred language, as well as dialects of different clans or family groups. These differences are intentional, as they convey information about individuals and their place in the world. For instance, what you call a place or a person provides insights into your relationship with that place or person. The same word may also represent a totem (a sacred animal), a location, or a living person because these elements are so closely linked in the cosmology and epistemology (i.e., the way of knowing) of Yol?u Matha speakers. Additionally, you may name a place differently from someone else, depending on your unique ownership relationship to it. When a person dies, their name can no longer be spoken, and the world must be renamed in response, including its places and totems, as a sign of respect.

This example illustrates the dynamism and flexibility of first languages in their oral form (Christie, 1993) that continues to be seen today. These systems encompass sophisticated, graphical, and multimodal ways of conveying meaning, involving an overlay of diverse forms of communication such as word, image, gesture, sound, and space. When considering these aspects of first languages, we can define literacy as inherently multimodal, blending oral traditions, visual representations, bodily gestures, and rituals to communicate meaning (Glowczewski, 2019; Kalantzis & Cope, 2006). These integrated forms of communication are highly adaptable and accessible across different communities. The interplay of diverse forms of communication expresses rich, shared meanings and offers evidence for both the complexity of first languages and the fundamentally multimodal nature of human communication from its earliest origins (see Chapter 2 for an in-depth discussion of different forms of meaning-making) (Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2 Multimodal communication: Yol?u Garma Festival, Yirrkala, Northern Australia.

The ancestral homes of these first languages are found today in many regions of the world-for example, in Australia, Melanesia, the Americas, Siberia, and Arctic Europe. Unfortunately, many of these rich systems of communication are rapidly disappearing. This process has been ongoing for millennia now, as first languages have been replaced by those introduced by the evolution of farming societies which used writing as a tool of elite control, including religious hierarchy, bureaucratic regulation, and privileged knowledge. The process of decline began with the Indo-European and Celtic languages brought to Europe by invading farmers, the Greek and Latin languages in Europe, the African kingdoms' languages (like the Bantu languages), the Mesoamerican languages of the Maya, Aztecs, Olmecs, and Incas, and the Chinese languages and their derivatives in East Asia (Figure 1.3). More recently, industrial societies have used "standard" or national forms of their languages as a tool for mass citizenship. In the following section, we explore the coming of writing that resulted in the decline of first languages and its ascent as the most valued medium of communication.

Figure 1.3 The birthplaces of the first writing.

The Coming of Writing and Print Literacy

Writing as we understand it today emerged as regularized systems of repeatable, symbolic graphemes (i.e., the smallest units of a writing system that represent a meaningful sound or symbol). Some languages used alphabetical symbols (such as English), while others employed character-based symbols (such as Chinese) to record language. Writing first developed in Mesopotamia about five thousand years ago and later emerged independently in India, China, and Mesoamerica (Christin, 2002). Initially, this new technology served as a tool for maintaining inventories of ownership and wealth, functioning primarily as an instrument of state bureaucracy to manage and redistribute surpluses. Over time, it became a source of religious authority, reinforcing social order and addressing the deep social tensions caused by inequality (Goody, 1986).

In modern societies, we have come to refer to the birth of writing as "the beginning of history" or "the dawn of civilization." The long preceding period is often called "prehistory," inhabited by "uncivilized" peoples. By adopting this view, we forget most of the history of human presence as a species. This moment marked the beginning of a different kind of history. With these new societies came inequalities never experienced before. Farming brought opportunities for accumulating wealth and using surpluses for projects beyond the immediate needs of daily life. The monumental ruins of ancient civilizations testify to the magnitude of this inequality, and writing played a significant role in this social transformation.

These societal differences were amplified with the mechanization of writing, which began in 1039 and advanced significantly in 1450. Pi Sheng's invention of movable type in China in 1039, while innovative, did not extend beyond his workshop (Tsien & Needham, 1985). Gutenberg's printing press of 1450, however, became the prototype for modern systems of modularization, repetition, and division of labor (Eisenstein, 1979). As the first true industrial technology, the printing press revolutionized communication, but it also perpetuated social divisions (Figure 1.4).

Figure 1.4 The mechanization of writing.

Indeed, in its early centuries, the printing press reinforced the impact of writing by facilitating its rise as a tool of power and exclusion. As a consequence, literacy was now understood as the ability to read and write, and it consolidated the authority of the ruling class, who relied on elite knowledge of printed laws, administrative memos, and financial ledgers. In Europe, the ruling class communicated in Latin, an inaccessible language for most (Waquet, 2001). Gutenberg's Bible was printed in Latin, requiring priests, their chants, and the grandeur of church architecture to mediate between the mystically inaccessible text and the masses. Thus, this new literacy,...