The article said "mediate" and maybe that's okay, but I'm looking for more ordinary words to make it clear to myself. The "it" here is literacy. Literacy, small, is the ability to decode the words and send out your own messages and be understood. Literacy, big, is the ability to think it through, not just the message but the context, the implications, the stakes for you and others, the way it does or does not line up with what you know of the world, and the ability to speak back, to push back if need be, to use words to be a player in the world, not just a listener and a reader. The article said literacy, big, was the ability to mediate between yourself and the big world around you. So "mediate" is okay but it has no urgency, no presence, as a word. It holds a good idea at arm's length when we really need to look it in the eye. But that's the way specialists tend to talk--in jargon, to their colleagues--when if their field is worth a damn there are people who wish that they would speak with them.