Poetry’s Expository Function in Contexts of Linguistic Inequality

Abstract

Browsing in a bookstore some years ago in Asunción, Paraguay, I was struck by two facts: (1) the relative lack of materials in Guarani, which is spoken by the majority of the country’s people, and (2) the even greater paucity of expository prose material available in that language. Given the problematical status to which non-European tongues are often confined, even where they are the dominant means of oral communication, the first observation in not surprising. The second, on the other hand, merits thinking about. My trip to the bookstore produced Guarani dictionaries and grammars, collections of Guarani folklore, some plays, and various volumes of poetry, but almost no nonfictional prose. Historical and philosophical treatises, political tracts, “how-to” books for the home, technical manuals: all these were the province of Spanish. At first, this seemed an unfortunate—but not altogether shocking—consequence of “the way things are.” As time has gone on, however, I am persuaded that it bears profound implications, not only for Paraguay, but also—speaking now in the generic sense—for vast portions of the planet we inhabit. Even in countries where many can read and write the native tongue, large populations find themselves subject to a second and equally disturbing form of illiteracy—the simple unavailability of certain significant forms of written discourse.¹