Looking for an English word

[Jona Lendering]

Dear friends, I am looking for an English word that's not in my dictionary. It's the translation of the Dutch word "ontlezing", which describes the process in which people are reading less and less. It is mostly used in complaints about children watching too much TV et cetera. Thanks!

[Caius Fabius]

I suspect there is a technical word for this, but I don't know of any common word in English. The concept of 'techno-cultural illiteracy' comes to mind.

[Tarbicus]

Nescient?

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/nescient
http://www.yourdictionary.com/wotd/wotd ... d=nescient

Or maybe 'literary nescience'.

Or, 'unlettered' is probably more apt.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/unlettered
http://dict.die.net/unlettered/

[M. Demetrius]

Colloquially, we'd call it "dumbing down".

The scary thing about that is that these kids are the ones who'll be counting out and administering our medications when we're in the nursing homes...not that long from now.

hock:

[Jona Lendering]

'literary nescience' and 'unlettered' are good approximations, and I can continue my article, but I'd like to stress that it is a process; that aspect is stressed in 'dumbing down', but that expression is not directly related to reading and literature. Thanks for the suggestions, of course.

The benefit of dumbing down is, of course, that writers can use old clichés and tricks to impress readers. I am reviewing Jill Gregory and Karen Tintori's [amazon]The Book of Names[/amazon]; for people who liked the Da Vinci Code, it is simply a must-read. Certainly no bad book, in fact a great read, but too stereotypical to be really great literature.