I just read a comment by a fairly regularly published columnist who wrote “assume” when she meant “as soon”. That’s a pretty strong indicator of what any literate person would see as illiteracy: a verbal vocabulary that outstrips a written/read vocabulary to the point of a baffling lack of comprehension.
Assuming people are literate just because they have a large storehouse of words they can encode or decode (whether they comprehend those words’ meanings or not) is something I’d as soon see–No! a lot SOONER see–eliminated as allowed to continue. More and more often nowadays, it just ain’t necessarily so.
More here and here and here and here.
Literacy is more than just being able to decode/encode letters into words; it’s more than having a large vocabulary of–largely–misunderstood words; it’s more than simply being able to encode/decode words and know those words’ meanings. Literacy is being able to read and comprehend (genuinely) complex text and having read loads and tons and yards and yards of well-written text requiring both concrete and abstract thought comprehension. THAT’S what literate people do.
But more and more Americans think they are literate, because they have (lying) certification saying they are.