You 39;re Illiterate

[Ailene Goldhirsh]

Illiteratemay be used in both specific and general senses. When used specifically, it refers to the inability to read or write. In a more general sense, illiterate may signify a lack of familiarity with some body of knowledge (as in being "musically illiterate") or indicate a lack of competence in or familiarity with literature.

I was 17 when I finished all 291 pages of Belle De Jour: Secret Diary of a Call Girl on holiday in Benidorm with my girlfriends. One might guffaw that Belle and her sexy, clumsy mishaps do not qualify as a real book; but even a work deemed "trash" had proved a 14-day struggle. Until then, I had never read a full book in my entire life.

I was far from illiterate, but the importance of actually reading was never prioritised in my world. At our school, the library had been converted into a behavioural isolation unit. We weren't really pushed to become the book critics of tomorrow.

For me, reading is now an important part of my life. But for many people, illiteracy follows them into old age. Norman Annal, now aged 69, had never really read a book until he retired. "I had my appendix out just before I was supposed to take my 11-plus [exam], and I had to stay home after that for eight weeks," he explained over the phone. "It was a crucial time, and I just slipped through the net: dropping into classes that were ranked lower and lower, until I was in the bottom set with other kids who could barely speak, let alone read and write."

Living at the intersect of being from a low-income family, slipping through the educational net, coming from an exceptionally rural area and from a world where the cultural cachet of reading a "good book" was non-existent and adult reading role models weren't around, meant that, for Norman, it became an unquestionable norm to never, ever need to read.

Literacy, and poor literacy skills, are much more common than you might think. The reason illiteracy often disappears under the radar is because, by its very nature, it is exclusionary. Most, if not all, modes of communication require some literacy skills: texting, looking up a name in a mobile phone to make a call, using Google Maps to find out where you're going. That's before the onerous process of applying for jobs, or seeking benefits, or managing your health comes into the picture. People who can't read and write are easy to forget about entirely. Illiteracy is also culturally exclusionary: if you don't read books or newspapers, your frames of reference become more limited. We imbibe and recount phrases and passages between groups of friends and our communities. We don't realise how much conversation and social connection begins with reading something.

"There's snobbery in books," Norman adds. "Now I read a lot, and I notice that I could read a book that somebody of higher intellect would regard as trash, and adore it. I would keep quiet about it in certain circles: I would say, 'Oh I'm reading Dickens,' and that would get you past it all. But I'm actually reading Jane Austen fan fiction at the moment, and I love it, but I wouldn't profess it."

In 2014 the Department for Education published a study that proved one in five children cannot "read well" by the age of 11. A more recent OECD report estimated that there are nine million working age adults in England who have low literacy skills (that's over a quarter).

"These figures won't account for people with a wide range of different conditions who find it hard to read for reasons other than not having the requisite skills," Sue Wilkinson, CEO of The Reading Agency, adds. "People with mild mental health conditions, for example, who find that concentrating on a book is hard, people with conditions like dementia or those who are blind and partially sighted."

The effects of illiteracy are far reaching. There's a direct correlation between poor literacy and crime; a recent UK study by the Literacy Trust revealed that "60 percent of the prison population is said to have difficulties in basic literacy skills". There is also a correlation between illiteracy and limited literacy and receiving effective healthcare. Public Health England report that 42 percent of all working age adults are unable to make use of everyday healthcare information, and as a result there's a direct link between low literacy and poor health outcomes. Of course, illiteracy also correlates with other factors, such as socioeconomic background, but even when those are taken into account illiteracy is still more likely to be a predictor of poverty, poor health and likelihood of ending up in the criminal justice system than most other factors.

"The more I don't read, the harder it is to read. There's so many distractions nowadays, and having two kids I'm just so tired," adds Danielle. "But I do read with the kids, because I know how important that is, and I want them to have access to anything they want. Beyond that, getting better at reading just doesn't feel that important to me because it feels like books that aren't Katie Price or something aren't written for me, so what's the point?"

The importance of reading is constantly imprinted upon us by way of our inability to survive without it. Stigmatising the illiterate, or those who don't like to read because they find it hard, comes in many forms, from judging someone's choice of book, to laughing and joking that someone finds it hard to read aloud, or to write totally coherently (remember this next time you hilariously attack someone for confusing "they're" and "their" on Facebook). It's impossible to put yourself in the shoes of someone who finds reading hard, because you've just read this. Bu when reading ability really is so often drawn on class and income lines we must cast the net wider to be more tolerant of, and helpful to, people who find it hard to utilise words for their benefit.

I really, genuinely, cannot see the problem with being judgemental. There are correct ways to speak (and to write), less correct but acceptable ways, and incorrect (and therefore unacceptable) ways. No-one would (I think) claim that there is only one way to speak (or write) correctly, but there is a clear continuum between correct and incorrect, and I for one see no problem with someone being judgemental about usages that are clearly incorrect ("we was", "we're gonna", "I ain't done nothing", etc.). All three of these examples are, to my mind, clearly illiterate usages, and I would have no hesitation in describing them as such.

He seems to be conflating typographical errors, solecisms, informal usages, dialect, and innovations or neologisms. Exactly how much you might personally want to copy edit any of these would depend on the demands of the context and relevant style. There's nothing wrong with advising people about how to write and speak in a way which won't annoy your interlocutors in a given circumstance, but it's not a measure of your worth as a human being. That's where it's at.

As to the pronunciation and orthographical difference between "comptroller" and "controller", and their etymology, I can only suggest that it's worth a careful look at the first page or so of internet entries on these words (I used Google).

Martin Schwartz

Garner has this reputation as the sophisticate's usage writer. This reputation comes partly from his pseudo-quantitative hand-waving, and partly from his largely avoiding obvious name calling. That last one can carry you a long ways. Look good in a suit and have a calm affect, and you can say the same things as those spittle-flecked maniacs and still get invited to respectable parties. But the mask slips from time to time.

Hmm, my computer's spell-check feature is advising me to consider

more carefully my "orthographical" (vs. "orthographic".

There seems to be a moral there.

My favorite spell-check story: Some years ago a student, Iranian as it happens, submitted to me a good a paper on Persian and Middle Persian poetry. When I faulted him for writing "hemstitches"

("hem-stitches"?) for "hemistichs", he blamed it, maybe rightly,

on his spell-check.

Martin Schwartz

On the contrary, pronouncing 'comptroller' with the the 'p' shows that you have learned it by reading it, as does pronouncing any word exactly as spelled. People can't win. If I had *heard* 'comptroller', I would have written it as 'controller'. The only way people can spell and pronounce it 'correctly' is by hearing *and* reading it.

FWIW, Dictionary.com records the 'spelling pronunciation' alongside the standard one, which shows that enough people must be saying it.

I think people buy finger-wagging usage guides not to be spanked, but to build and support their feelings of superiority. The buyers of usage guides want to know rules that they can see that other people are flouting. For that, it doesn't matter if the rules have evidential support.

I suspect the problem may be that we don't have different adjectives for "of or pertaining to the functionally-literate" and "of or pertaining to the literati." Nor do we have different pejorative-sounding antonyms for these different senses of "literate." Of course, viewing "literate" in the "of or pertaining to the literati" sense as a compliment and "illiterate" in the opposite sense as a pejorative is based on a rather significant unexamined minor premise, namely the assumption that the literati is a social class or subculture that is praiseworthy rather than blameworthy (or maybe even just neutral in moral terms).

I remember that when studying French at university, our lecturer pointed out the difficulty of the English words "literate" and "illiterate". French has a clear distinction between "analphabte" meaning "not knowing how to read or write" and "illettr" for "unlettered".

I agree with Cervantes, that Garner "seems to be conflating typographical errors, solecisms, informal usages, dialect, and innovations or neologisms". But especially in the phrase concerning misspelled word in "otherwise literate publications", I think there is a criticism of sloppiness, of not properly checking a text before publishing it.

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