Phaedrus and Jack Goody–Blog Post 2 Due 2/10

I’ve altered the Goody reading slightly. Rather than the essay on the “Domestication of Savage Mind,” which is a little too bloated for our purposes, I’ve decided a better piece is going to be Jack Goody and Ian Watt’s “The Consequences of Literacy.” Goody and Watt begin with the premise that “we can no longer accept the ethnocentric notion that rational thought characterizes people who live in complex societies, whereas prelogical thought is typical of simpler societies, nor can we afford to ignore the differences between societies that represent polar opposites with respect to the complexity of their technological infrastructure” (Cole and Cole 307).

Goody and Watt discuss various key concepts throughout the essay. Literacy is clearly one of them. There are others, of course. For your post, I’d like you to list the five top terms that you personally think are most relevant to Goody and Watt’s essay. Then, I’d like you to choose three terms to discuss. For each term, describe why that term is so important to the overall essay, about a paragraph for each.

Bonus! Write a paragraph that link’s Goody and Watt’s essay to the way Rhetoric is discussed Phaedrus. (Yep, this last paragraph is extra credit).

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