ABSTRACT
The literacy hypothesis was the bold claim that the cognitive and social changes observed over time and across cultures may be traced, in large part, to changes in means of communication, especially the invention of writing systems. This view took its best-known form in the groundbreaking and influential paper written by anthropologist Jack Goody and literary theorist Ian Watt, first published in 1963, entitled The Consequences of Literacy (Goody & Watt, 1968). In that paper the authors argued that an alphabetic writing system had played a dramatic role in the specialization of modes of discourse, thus sharply distinguishing between myth and history, and the rise of specialized modes of thought based on linguistic awareness and formal logic. In a word, they saw literacy as a primary factor in the rise of what we now call a literate society, and more grandly, civilization: civil society, the society of rules and laws.
