Ok, here are my thoughts. First, anyone who wants to be illiterate regardless of whether they "should" be or not, could be. Heck, as a GM, if you wanted to say that your character should be literate and you want to RP gaining literacy over time, knock yourself out. No extra steps required.
Characters that are illiterate that want to be literate in at least A language just need to take the Linguistics skill. Mileage may vary between GMs for whether you gain literacy in all languages you know or just the additional ones you learn.
p. 155 Learn Language Unlike other skills, no Action Skill Roll is required to utilize this skill option. When you gain Linguistics as a trained skill, you learn how to speak, read, and write an additional language and continue to learn languages for every 3 ranks in this skill.
The Linguist talent requires the Linguistics skill (save granted in special ways such as backgrounds), gives you a +1 bonus on it and grants at least 1 additional language.
Honestly, for the most part it's not something I'm going to worry about. It's easy enough to gain literacy and if someone wants to be illiterate for RP reasons, go for it. Now if they claim to be a Scribe and illiterate they'll need to explain that one.
With a sweep of his hat,
Paul
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