The Iliad and The Odyssey were passed down orally before Homer (or whoever, depending on the rumours you listen to) set them onto a page. Were they poems before, or were they only transformed into poems by the act of converting them into codified squiggles? What about the bards? Not poets if they didn't write it down? "Sonnet" means little song -- what were those sonnet writers thinking? And all those silly people at Eisteddfods, reciting things they call poems... but they're not, they're performance pieces, can't those bloody Welsh get their definitions right?
And here I must clarify something very important: "text" does not mean that it must be something written, or at least it hasn't had this narrow definition for a good hundred years or so. A film is a text. A painting is a text. A speech is a text. The ridiculous pants of MC Hammer are a text. A face is a text. A text is anything that can be read, and reading does not just mean words on a page. Literacy means fluency with a text -- any kind of text.
And here I must clarify something very important: "text" does not mean that it must be something written, or at least it hasn't had this narrow definition for a good hundred years or so. A film is a text. A painting is a text. A speech is a text. The ridiculous pants of MC Hammer are a text. A face is a text. A text is anything that can be read, and reading does not just mean words on a page. Literacy means fluency with a text -- any kind of text.
It could be worse