During the late 1970s, English studies journals began to include various versions of, and proposals built upon, the Great Leap theory of literacy. Advocates of this theory claimed that literacy itself actually caused a "great leap" in human cognition and that the language of literate persons was essentially different from the language of oral people: oral people used coordination, which revealed their additive, holistic ways of thinking, whereas literate persons used subordination, an indicator of their analytic thought processes. Different theorists subscribed to different versions of the Great Leap theory, among them Walter Ong--one of the chief names associated with it--who assumed (1) that literacy-orality differences lay both in the physical world (i.e., sight and sound) and in the innate universal capacities and limits of the human mind; (2) that language was a transparent medium through which, if read properly, one could apprehend actual human thought processes; and (3) that both language and other human productions could be neutral. This perspective on literacy and the world view it embodied, reflected, and taught might have been part of the general retreat of American society from political and social questions raised during the 1960s. (AEW)