ABSTRACT

As these changes in perception emerged, there also grew to be a realization that such inventions as telephone, radio, and, particularly, television, were changing the ways in which society acquired information and communicated (McLuhan, 1964). Some even saw written language as being on the way out; and its exit could be documented in ways that had not been true of its entrance. The scholarly community could chart a change and through it look at earlier changes that had brought written language into human history. They did so by turning to history and to anthropology, particularly the study of nonliterate cultures-if they could find them (Clifford, 1986).