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The debate on the social and psychological implications of literacy enters a new stage with the publication of this volume. Distinguished scholars provide a sustained and detailed examination of the relations between orality and literacy, the traditions based on them, the functions served by them, and the psychological and linguistic processes recruited and enhanced by them. By shedding the romantic view that literacy is the royal road to rationality and modernity, the volume provides a more functional view of literacy. It places a new emphasis on the relationship between speaking and writing, and highlights the different ways in which people exploit the particular resources of speech and writing for special purposes such as building community, creating records, specialising genres such as prose fiction, enhancing private study and meditation, and enhancing the specialisation and organisation of knowledge.