=?windows-1252?Q?=93Literacy_Makes_You_Lazy=94=3A_?=Saving End angered Lan guages (fwd link)

[Anthony Webster]

Apparently, prior to literacy, Harrison memorized his cell phone numbers!
Literacy does not "make" you "lazy." Harrison seems to be ignoring a great
deal of research on the interconnections between orality and literacy.
Memorization, for example, has co-existed with literacy (there are a number
of religious examples of this). Literacies are social practices. We should
be suspicious of claims of technological determinism. akw

On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 10:21 PM, Phillip E Cash Cash <
cashcash at email.arizona.edu> wrote:

> “Literacy Makes You Lazy”: Saving Endangered Languages
>
> Posted by Brian Clark Howard of National Geographic News on June 25, 2012
> US
>
> “Literacy makes you lazy: we don’t memorize 10,000-word epic poems any
> more,” David Harrison, the director of research for the Living Tongues
> Institute for Endangered Languages, told an audience at the Aspen
> Environment Forum in Colorado this past weekend.
>
> “I don’t even memorize cell phone numbers any more,” said Harrison, a
> linguist who studies many of the world’s disappearing languages.
>
> Harrison’s group has been featured in National Geographic, and his
> team formed a five-year joint project with NG, Enduring Voices, to
> study some of the most important endangered language “hotspots” around
> the world. Harrison is also an NG fellow.
>
> Access full article below:
>
> http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/06/25/literacy-makes-you-lazy-saving-endangered-languages/
>



-- 
Anthony K. Webster, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Anthropology
Native American Studies Minor
MC 4502
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
Carbondale, IL 62901
618-453-5019
http://cola.siuc.edu/undergraduate/CollegeofLiberalArtsNativeAmericanStudies.html

Dream other dreams, and better!
                                 Mark Twain
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