The Rhetoric of Illiteracy

When we study the writings on illiteracy in France, we are forced to remark that little room for manoeuvre is left to the different commentators. It is as if the rules of the game and the elements to assemble have been identified and the only possibility of differentiation resides either in the combination of the different elements in play, or in the stylistic and rhetorical qualities put in the service of the common discursive funds. Save for the chronological knowledge of different social steps of the contruction of the « problem », it is the research into rhetorical constraints, which seems to weigh heavy in discourses on public complaints, that our work has been largely dedicated to.
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