ABSTRACT
Before the advent of writing, people communicated and passed on their knowledge mainly through the spoken word. But even in oral cultures, people still recorded and preserved ideas in pictographic form, inscribed on walls, artifacts, and earthen structures. Writing serves a host of social and cultural functions, from education to recreation. This chapter looks at some of the main functions of writing in society. Already in ancient times literacy had become a major social value, although it was still limited according to class. Today, literacy is assigned a broader definition and value based in multimodal forms of writing on the Internet.
