Your first thesis states that literacy changes in response to new technologies. This is undoubtedly true. But in your example of a 19-year-old’s navigation of the various texts, videos, etc. surrounding a given topic, you assume that this young adult is doing a lot of intellectual labor which, it seems to me, the technologies actively discourage young people (and, indeed, all of us) from undertaking. Scanning for bias? Reading all the way through arguments, especially when short-form video is waving at them from the margins? Checking the comment section *without* submitting to the temptations of groupthink, ad hominem shit-flinging, and/or the dumbed-down memeification of direly serious matters? Many of my sharpest high school students absolutely demonstrate a sophisticated, multimodal form of literacy that is enviable in its adaptability, speed, and sharp discernment of bias and tone. But the majority of my students simply don’t have these skills, which I’m tempted to say can be developed only *after* the more traditional skills of basic, book-based literacy have been mastered.
These reservations are anecdotal, founded on vibes, and probably unhelpful, but I really struggled with some of the assumptions you made in the first thesis.
(I apologize for commenting before I’ve even finished the article. I am reading with great interest because, like you, I care deeply about literacy and the life of the mind — and I want as many of my students as possible to be able to enjoy the fruits of reading!)
My apologies — I finished reading the WHOLE post (it’s ironic that I was pontificating about literacy on a post I hadn’t yet read in its entirety), and you cover my concerns and then some. The infrastructure argument is especially convincing. Thanks for sharing.
I think it's hard to dispute that deep reading is being flattened at best in comparison with when Latin and Greek were requirements in the better high schools. Obviously being a polyglot is a great benefit in itself, but alongside maths, the formal grammatical study of languages, though unnecessary for communication per se, provides logical discipline to the mind in a way that is more overt and probably provides better depth formation than simply reading the classics, intuitive ease notwithstanding.
As a native speaker of Spanish, with years of familiarity with both Castilian and New World forms, I have found that a study of Latin grammar has allowed me to appreciate the simplicity of the former relative to the latter, and perhaps hence the importance, inter alia, of studying a more complex language such as formal Latin tout court (but especially Ciceronian) and classical Greek forms (this is not to say that an equivalent study of modern German might not have similar benefits, especially vis-à-vis the vertebrae which Spanish lacks, namely the effective absence or subsumption of a declensional system).
As for the greatest effects of literary art: they lie in its transformation of writing into the most uncanny mirror of nature, approximate to an operatic overture or a minutely attuned measure of the empirical qua intuitive science (i.e. the writer who intuitively masters the indivisible duality of said labyrinth). In short, I speak of the phenomenon of an unconscious philia towards the simultaneous interiorization/externalization vis-à-vis the subject at an intuitive level (his/her implied undoing in the empirical automation of the recording of nature). Can AI be moved towards such unconscious simultaneity, towards its spontaneous mastery?
This was well done! I appreciated the structure, care, and nuance you wrote with. Your conclusion that the literacy crisis speaks to a destruction of infrastructure that upheld literary studies landed with me. The challenge is that this is a system issue but many of the solutions are focused on individual decisions and choice.
Dear Trevor Aleo, Thank you for this informative and well-written piece. I deeply resonate with your argumentation and agree with you that, all too often, the problems our world faces are not solvable through individual efforts alone. I despise the fact that the responsibility for everything seems to lie with the individual, which overlooks the impact of political and economic systems and infrastructure. I am a member of the literary studies community in Germany, and I can resonate only too well with the "crisis of interest" you mentioned, as I am constantly questioning whether what I do is "worth it" (especially when thinking about money). It is frustrating to be let down by politics and failing infrastructure when you are convinced of the value of your discipline.
However, I want to persevere, and hopefully you, along with many others, will too. Kind regards!
I appreciate the clarity and depth here so much. You are giving me language for deeper conversations with colleagues on this and I’ll be sharing it for sure. Thank you for taking the time to write this.
What a great analysis! This is just one small part of the larger conversation, but I’m currently reading Wolf and thinking hard about the background knowledge conundrum. I taught at the high school level and the tension between supplying students with the necessary background knowledge so that they can engage on increasingly deep levels with literature and putting books in front of them that will ignite a love for literature is really tricky. Both can be, but not always at the same time for the same student.
Trevor, this is an incredible piece! You are thoughtful about literacy, examining it from multiple angles. Very few teachers have experience in graduate school or literary studies, and so it’s easy to conflate and extrapolate based on classroom experiences with students, clickbait articles, and hysteria. Thank you for presenting a nuanced lens to literacy and literary studies, and explaining it clearly!
The plethora of authors always writing in the first person, where they are the subject and not us the readers, might be part of the problem . The 'I' Gender Generation, no 'he' or 'she' allowed .
One might recall that there have been numerous historical changes in the use of both tense and grammatical person in English history, and if one is particularly well educated it is possible that they are aware of the various traditions that exist in other languages.
I see no good reason to see the latest change as nothing more than another in a long line of fundamentally neutral changes to the english language.
Unfortunately the car is hurtling towards you at immense speed, it's already red and about to get redder. Alternatively, you have Tritanomaly; there are plenty of good reasons to seperate perception and reality in language.
Have Emotions have become more important than Facts.
Sylvia Plath's confessional style, characterized by the frequent use of the first-person perspective, significantly influenced modern literature. While it's challenging to quantify the exact increase in first-person writing since her time, studies indicate a general trend towards more personal and subjective narratives in various literary forms. For instance, research has shown that the frequency of first-person singular pronouns in journalistic writing has increased over time, reflecting a shift towards more involved and personal storytelling over straight third person narrator facts .
"When a major policy debate or breaking news event unfolds online, they cross-reference short-form video analysis, parse hyperlinked primary sources, evaluate the credibility and rhetorical posture of algorithmic feeds, and weigh the consensus within a comment section."
If you think this is how 19-year-olds are evaluating news you are woefully misinformed. It makes it hard to take the piece seriously.
While this is full of tricolours and m dashes, it has something strong to say that points out that the noise around contemporary literary intake and its supposed results, which is not the end of the world.
Nice and balanced article! I do agree that the fears about declining literacy are a bit overblown as everyone engages with text online more than ever. I think attention span is key to engaging with text in a traditional literary studies sense, but it's clear that an overabundance of text is sapping us of the ability to think and concentrate deeply. I wonder if the kids who couldn't figure out Dickens will find the attention span necessary to study at a deeper level or if we'll just have entire generations of kids who will never be able to get through the classic texts
Literacy is effectively in steep decline for a number reasons/dimensions. A series of very important scientific discoveries in the past 20 years sink language's boat.
Language, speech and literacy have always been suspect in terms of Western functional and systemic functional linguistics. To boil the ideas down: speech and text are not for everyone. They are either class-determined and cognitive determined for some (dyslexia, aphasia, Williams Syndrome).
Ooh, wow, what a radical idea!! Really transgressive and impressive! A handful of cherry-picked and misread studies* (not "discoveries", and like most such studies, highly questionable and awaiting replication) handily resolve once and for all the complex questions of language and its relation to thought. Got it. √
"Language was always a quick and dirty adaptation (some say exaptation) that's overstayed its welcome. It's time for a new paradigm."
That would be news to Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth, as well as the Surrealists. But what am I waiting for? I'll go immolate my personal library immediately, because Kevin McLeod says it's time for a new "paradigm" [sic]!
* Notes:
1. The 2016 paper demonstrates that numerous forms of thought do not require an intact verbal language system. It does NOT demonstrate that language and thought ordinarily operate independently, that they never share resources, or that they exert little influence on one another. The paper itself explicitly acknowledges possible developmental and support roles for language.
2. Two highly selected, pre-morbidly capable individuals cannot establish that language never supports such reasoning in the general population. The study does strongly challenge that “deduction and induction must be carried out in natural language.” It does NOT establish that “language and reasoning are also quite separate”.
3. This claim is not supported by the two linked papers. The claim combines one defensible observation—literacy outcomes are affected by social circumstances and neurodevelopmental conditions--with much stronger deterministic assertions that the cited sources neither state nor imply. In addition, the claim absurdly conflates speech, language, literacy, and social class, as well as three very different clinical conditions and two schools of linguistics.
“We refute (based on empirical evidence) claims that humans use linguistic representations to think.”
Ev Fedorenko Language Lab MIT 2024
And I'll use Cassirer. The fact is language is both ambiguous and arbitrary. It will never last. Post-literacy, bless us.
“All linguistic denotation is essentially ambiguous–and in this ambiguity, this “paronymia” of words is the source of all myths…this self-deception is rooted in language, which is forever making a game of the human mind, ever ensnaring it in that iridescent play of meanings…even theoretical knowledge becomes phantasmagoria; for even knowledge can never reproduce the true nature of things as they are but must frame their essence in “concepts.” Consequently all schemata which science evolves in order to classify, organize and summarize the phenomena of the real, turns out to be nothing but arbitrary schemes. So knowledge, as well as myth, language, and art, has been reduced to a kind of fiction–a fiction that recommends its usefulness, but must not be measured by any strict standard of truth, if it is not to melt away into nothingness.”
Interesting piece!
Your first thesis states that literacy changes in response to new technologies. This is undoubtedly true. But in your example of a 19-year-old’s navigation of the various texts, videos, etc. surrounding a given topic, you assume that this young adult is doing a lot of intellectual labor which, it seems to me, the technologies actively discourage young people (and, indeed, all of us) from undertaking. Scanning for bias? Reading all the way through arguments, especially when short-form video is waving at them from the margins? Checking the comment section *without* submitting to the temptations of groupthink, ad hominem shit-flinging, and/or the dumbed-down memeification of direly serious matters? Many of my sharpest high school students absolutely demonstrate a sophisticated, multimodal form of literacy that is enviable in its adaptability, speed, and sharp discernment of bias and tone. But the majority of my students simply don’t have these skills, which I’m tempted to say can be developed only *after* the more traditional skills of basic, book-based literacy have been mastered.
These reservations are anecdotal, founded on vibes, and probably unhelpful, but I really struggled with some of the assumptions you made in the first thesis.
(I apologize for commenting before I’ve even finished the article. I am reading with great interest because, like you, I care deeply about literacy and the life of the mind — and I want as many of my students as possible to be able to enjoy the fruits of reading!)
My apologies — I finished reading the WHOLE post (it’s ironic that I was pontificating about literacy on a post I hadn’t yet read in its entirety), and you cover my concerns and then some. The infrastructure argument is especially convincing. Thanks for sharing.
I think it's hard to dispute that deep reading is being flattened at best in comparison with when Latin and Greek were requirements in the better high schools. Obviously being a polyglot is a great benefit in itself, but alongside maths, the formal grammatical study of languages, though unnecessary for communication per se, provides logical discipline to the mind in a way that is more overt and probably provides better depth formation than simply reading the classics, intuitive ease notwithstanding.
As a native speaker of Spanish, with years of familiarity with both Castilian and New World forms, I have found that a study of Latin grammar has allowed me to appreciate the simplicity of the former relative to the latter, and perhaps hence the importance, inter alia, of studying a more complex language such as formal Latin tout court (but especially Ciceronian) and classical Greek forms (this is not to say that an equivalent study of modern German might not have similar benefits, especially vis-à-vis the vertebrae which Spanish lacks, namely the effective absence or subsumption of a declensional system).
As for the greatest effects of literary art: they lie in its transformation of writing into the most uncanny mirror of nature, approximate to an operatic overture or a minutely attuned measure of the empirical qua intuitive science (i.e. the writer who intuitively masters the indivisible duality of said labyrinth). In short, I speak of the phenomenon of an unconscious philia towards the simultaneous interiorization/externalization vis-à-vis the subject at an intuitive level (his/her implied undoing in the empirical automation of the recording of nature). Can AI be moved towards such unconscious simultaneity, towards its spontaneous mastery?
This was well done! I appreciated the structure, care, and nuance you wrote with. Your conclusion that the literacy crisis speaks to a destruction of infrastructure that upheld literary studies landed with me. The challenge is that this is a system issue but many of the solutions are focused on individual decisions and choice.
Dear Trevor Aleo, Thank you for this informative and well-written piece. I deeply resonate with your argumentation and agree with you that, all too often, the problems our world faces are not solvable through individual efforts alone. I despise the fact that the responsibility for everything seems to lie with the individual, which overlooks the impact of political and economic systems and infrastructure. I am a member of the literary studies community in Germany, and I can resonate only too well with the "crisis of interest" you mentioned, as I am constantly questioning whether what I do is "worth it" (especially when thinking about money). It is frustrating to be let down by politics and failing infrastructure when you are convinced of the value of your discipline.
However, I want to persevere, and hopefully you, along with many others, will too. Kind regards!
I appreciate the clarity and depth here so much. You are giving me language for deeper conversations with colleagues on this and I’ll be sharing it for sure. Thank you for taking the time to write this.
What a great analysis! This is just one small part of the larger conversation, but I’m currently reading Wolf and thinking hard about the background knowledge conundrum. I taught at the high school level and the tension between supplying students with the necessary background knowledge so that they can engage on increasingly deep levels with literature and putting books in front of them that will ignite a love for literature is really tricky. Both can be, but not always at the same time for the same student.
Trevor, this is an incredible piece! You are thoughtful about literacy, examining it from multiple angles. Very few teachers have experience in graduate school or literary studies, and so it’s easy to conflate and extrapolate based on classroom experiences with students, clickbait articles, and hysteria. Thank you for presenting a nuanced lens to literacy and literary studies, and explaining it clearly!
The plethora of authors always writing in the first person, where they are the subject and not us the readers, might be part of the problem . The 'I' Gender Generation, no 'he' or 'she' allowed .
One might recall that there have been numerous historical changes in the use of both tense and grammatical person in English history, and if one is particularly well educated it is possible that they are aware of the various traditions that exist in other languages.
I see no good reason to see the latest change as nothing more than another in a long line of fundamentally neutral changes to the english language.
"I think the car is blue."
The car is blue and does not care what you think.
"I think the car is blue"
Unfortunately the car is hurtling towards you at immense speed, it's already red and about to get redder. Alternatively, you have Tritanomaly; there are plenty of good reasons to seperate perception and reality in language.
Boo Hoo Ted Hughes
Sylvia stuck her head in a oven .
What even possessed you to write that comment? I wish I had the self confidence you clearly possess.
Have Emotions have become more important than Facts.
Sylvia Plath's confessional style, characterized by the frequent use of the first-person perspective, significantly influenced modern literature. While it's challenging to quantify the exact increase in first-person writing since her time, studies indicate a general trend towards more personal and subjective narratives in various literary forms. For instance, research has shown that the frequency of first-person singular pronouns in journalistic writing has increased over time, reflecting a shift towards more involved and personal storytelling over straight third person narrator facts .
It is derogatorily called 'Masturbation Poetry'
"When a major policy debate or breaking news event unfolds online, they cross-reference short-form video analysis, parse hyperlinked primary sources, evaluate the credibility and rhetorical posture of algorithmic feeds, and weigh the consensus within a comment section."
If you think this is how 19-year-olds are evaluating news you are woefully misinformed. It makes it hard to take the piece seriously.
Yes. Very Pollyanna.
Rubbish. Thank you.
While this is full of tricolours and m dashes, it has something strong to say that points out that the noise around contemporary literary intake and its supposed results, which is not the end of the world.
Nice and balanced article! I do agree that the fears about declining literacy are a bit overblown as everyone engages with text online more than ever. I think attention span is key to engaging with text in a traditional literary studies sense, but it's clear that an overabundance of text is sapping us of the ability to think and concentrate deeply. I wonder if the kids who couldn't figure out Dickens will find the attention span necessary to study at a deeper level or if we'll just have entire generations of kids who will never be able to get through the classic texts
Literacy is effectively in steep decline for a number reasons/dimensions. A series of very important scientific discoveries in the past 20 years sink language's boat.
1. Thought and language are quite separate.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4874898/
2. Language and logic, deduction and inductive reasoning are also quite separate.
"Together, these results indicate that linguistic representations are neither utilized nor required for inductive or deductive logical reasoning."
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2520095123
Language, speech and literacy have always been suspect in terms of Western functional and systemic functional linguistics. To boil the ideas down: speech and text are not for everyone. They are either class-determined and cognitive determined for some (dyslexia, aphasia, Williams Syndrome).
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4020782/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4102849/
Language was always a quick and dirty adaptation (some say exaptation) that's overstayed its welcome. It's time for a new paradigm.
Ooh, wow, what a radical idea!! Really transgressive and impressive! A handful of cherry-picked and misread studies* (not "discoveries", and like most such studies, highly questionable and awaiting replication) handily resolve once and for all the complex questions of language and its relation to thought. Got it. √
"Language was always a quick and dirty adaptation (some say exaptation) that's overstayed its welcome. It's time for a new paradigm."
That would be news to Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth, as well as the Surrealists. But what am I waiting for? I'll go immolate my personal library immediately, because Kevin McLeod says it's time for a new "paradigm" [sic]!
* Notes:
1. The 2016 paper demonstrates that numerous forms of thought do not require an intact verbal language system. It does NOT demonstrate that language and thought ordinarily operate independently, that they never share resources, or that they exert little influence on one another. The paper itself explicitly acknowledges possible developmental and support roles for language.
2. Two highly selected, pre-morbidly capable individuals cannot establish that language never supports such reasoning in the general population. The study does strongly challenge that “deduction and induction must be carried out in natural language.” It does NOT establish that “language and reasoning are also quite separate”.
3. This claim is not supported by the two linked papers. The claim combines one defensible observation—literacy outcomes are affected by social circumstances and neurodevelopmental conditions--with much stronger deterministic assertions that the cited sources neither state nor imply. In addition, the claim absurdly conflates speech, language, literacy, and social class, as well as three very different clinical conditions and two schools of linguistics.
I'll cut to chase since you confuse the issues:
“We refute (based on empirical evidence) claims that humans use linguistic representations to think.”
Ev Fedorenko Language Lab MIT 2024
And I'll use Cassirer. The fact is language is both ambiguous and arbitrary. It will never last. Post-literacy, bless us.
“All linguistic denotation is essentially ambiguous–and in this ambiguity, this “paronymia” of words is the source of all myths…this self-deception is rooted in language, which is forever making a game of the human mind, ever ensnaring it in that iridescent play of meanings…even theoretical knowledge becomes phantasmagoria; for even knowledge can never reproduce the true nature of things as they are but must frame their essence in “concepts.” Consequently all schemata which science evolves in order to classify, organize and summarize the phenomena of the real, turns out to be nothing but arbitrary schemes. So knowledge, as well as myth, language, and art, has been reduced to a kind of fiction–a fiction that recommends its usefulness, but must not be measured by any strict standard of truth, if it is not to melt away into nothingness.”
Cassirer Language and Myth