Fundamental issues include how literacy is defined, what differences distinguish oral from literate modes, where the "effects" of literacy are found, how societies have used literate practices to exercise social control, and how relatonships between literate practice and something called the social order are conceptualized and investigated. Central to these questions is the distinction between the communicating (that is, social) body and modes of communication that are removed from the body--modes we know in commonsense terms as media.