Again with the literacy

This previous spring semester, I took a course on literacy. While I'm not entirely clear on exactly what was accomplished (aside from much writing), we spent a lot of time focusing on the idea of "literacy". Everything about literacy, from its historical basis to its modern connotations to what exactly to how different individuals from different social classes/time periods have used it. Really, a fascinating study.

And here I find that I am reading, once more, about literacy. Though less about literacy and more about "fluency". Namely, the report author believes literacy to be too limited, that literacy is the expert that stands still and dies off (Thanks for the metaphor, McLuhan!), whereas fluency is the ability to take a set of skills and apply them elsewhere, even in areas that aren't necessarily related. Personally? I don't really see the difference. As far as I'm concerned, Literacy is the ability to learn and communicate effectively. One can never be fully literate, fully versed in any living language. And as easy as learning Latin would be, no one speaks it, so you can't really communicate. Literacy is, in my mind and in most of the reports' mind, a fluid, amorphous structure that is many things at once.

I find it funny that he establishes that there are forms of communication that are not "literacies", as if implying that there are forms of communication that we don't have to learn to communicate in. I'm not entirely sure what he means there. After all, what we know as text are really nothing more than squiggly images of ideas we collectively understand. And we have to learn how to interpret various visual cues, such as a red sign (Stop!) or a green light (Go!). Without learning these things, I would be lost in the modern world I happen to inhabit. The same applies to other images, body language, inflection, scent, touch, etc. We live in a world rich in sensory input coded information. Why do we focus so much on the written language when there are other learned means of communication?