ABSTRACT
This is a chapter about connections. It discusses a question to which this symposium was addressed. Thinking, language, and conventional notations can be deployed for the same task, representing knowledge. How are these systems of representation linked? The question is central. Humans are symbolic creatures. Their interactions in the world are often filtered and shaped by interwoven public and private representational systems. Within the tapestry, one symbolic system may be layered on another, as when thoughts about an event are described in words that are sculpted into an essay. Even within symbol systems, elements represent each other. For example, purposes are described metaphorically as paths (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Language, thought, and literacy not only represent the world and the self, they represent each other. Each system has distinctive properties and components that are themselves woven together, but the systems coil and thread through one another. Although each system has a distinctive texture, the strength of the human fabric derives from the way the various threads are knit together. Within this cloth, it is often hard to distinguish the warp from the woof or the constraints of the notational system from the structure of the events represented. Literacy builds on and expresses prior conceptual and linguistic notions. Conversely, the use of specific notational systems influences how events are conceptualized and described.
