literacy

[Rick Mc Callister]

	TV & film are a type of literacy in the sense that they fix and
distribute certain linguistic forms. In literary studies, they are most
definitely considered as "text."

	Linguistics, of course, is another discipline.

At 6:35 PM +0000 1/28/99, Peter &/or Graham wrote:
>>It's notable that there has been a massive convergence in dialect forms in
>>modern English ...
>>The same has happened in places like Italy,

>We might ask if this is due to TV and film rather than literacy.

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
MUW
Columbus MS 39701
rmccalli at sunmuw1.muw.edu

[ Moderator's comment:
  It is, indeed, another discipline, one in which the spoken word is given
  primacy.  The point being made, by me as well as others, is that TV, film,
  and before them radio, provided *spoken* evidence of standard pronunciations
  that was previously lacking in the lives of most speakers of most languages
  around the world, and thus an homogenization of dialects is made possible
  that simply could not have happened earlier because of the communications
  media available.
  --rma ]