- "reading and writing are enacted in culturally and socially specific ways" (situated in the society and culture)
- "literacy is the ability to read and write" (situated the the individual)
Orality and literacy are intertwined! (examples)
- discuss movie reviews on Rotten Tomatoes before you decide which movie to see
- Read the label of nutritional information before you order food in the cafeteria
- report an email that is abusive/threatening to the campus police
- Read a "how to book", before you go on a job interview
- You launch and online petition on change.org to get ASL recognized as a language and disseminate it over facebook and a blog
- your class lecture is prepared for by reading your book and presented through a blog
- A religious leader justifies homophobia through the reading and interpretation of the Bible
- A conversation about graduation inspires you to write a resume and finish your digital portfolio
- MORE?
Literacy Events and Literacy Practices
- LE: occasions in which written language is essential to the nature of participants interactions and their interpretive processes and strategies
- literacy events take place in specific social contexts and stress the situated nature of literacy
- activities where literacy has a role
- there is a text or texts central to the activity and there may be talk around it
- observable episodes which arise from practices and are shaped by them
- written texts can influence orality (conversations) and visa versa.
- LP: general NORMS regarding how written texts tend to be "produced", interpreted or discussed
- the general cultural ways of utilizing written language
- Must be studied together (examples)
- Pema Kumari's Letter
- Amorosa's tell all book
- Your Senior Thesis
- Writing your own wedding vows
"Autonomous" versus "Ideological" Approaches
- Autonomous:
- Writing is a neutral technology and its impact is the same in all cultures, and separate from any particular social context
- the advent of literacy will cause certain social and psychological effects. (Goody)
- Writing allows human consciousness to achieve its full potential (One)
- Writing is needed for creative expression
- there is a "great divide" between oral and written cultures (not found to be true!!!)
- Ideological:
- focus on activities, events and ideological constructs associated with particular expressions and occurrences of literacy
- situated literacy research (examples)
- Preschool literacy in the southern USA (effects of race and class) and school success
- Maintown
- Roadville
- Trackton
- Preschool literacy in the USA
- Shirley Brice Heath
- how did preschoolers and adult act around and interact with written texts ?
- How did the different ways of being socialized into reading and writing have an influence on children's subsequent performance in school? (Bernstein also)
- three communities studied
- Maintown (wmc)
- children encouraged to give attention to books almost from birth
- children's bedrooms had bookcases and parents read to them regularly
- talked about books during their reading and outside of school contexts
- encouraged "fictional" storytelling
- learn the authority of books-how to be quite and patient when they are read
- ready for school
- Roadville (wwc)
- baby rooms decorated with literacy based stimuli (alphabet, etc)
- books used to instruct children, teaching labels with them and testing children on these labels, given workbooks to practice
- literacy habits were NOT extended beyond reading or make connections to the real world
- fictionalized accounts of real events are viewed as lies-reality is better than fiction
- did well in school to start, but failed to be able to give their own opinion in response to reading (fell behind)
- Tracktown (bwc)
- immersed from birth in constant human communication, verbal and nonverbal
- did not read to their children and homes did not have any reading material
- children rewarded for listening to and imitating verbal and nonverbal behaviors of others.
- develop complex and creative abilities to play with language-develop rich verbal repertoires on their own
- face totally unfamiliar types of questions and interactions with literacy. majority fail at learning these.
- love-letter writing in Nepal
- girls and women used literacy skills to write love letters
- subverted arranged traditional marriage
- encourage gender roles (inequalities)
- left them without recourse in a "bad" marriage
- created prolonged courtships and judgments based on literacy skills
- love-letter writing in Nepal
- Men were all practically literate but most women were initially not. What would happen as women gained literacy skills was Ahearn's question.
- women used skill in love letter writing in a surprising way increased elopements in what was traditionally a culture characterized by arranged marriage
- love letters were acceptable where dating was NOT
- letter writing characterized the person as educated (developed) rather than backward
- created new ways in which villagers thought about themselves
- Instant Messaging (IM and Texting)
- blurred the line between speech and writing
- creating a HYBRID form?
- meaning of CAPS
- be+like
- Social Media (instagram, facebook, snapchat)
- memes
- Instant messaging (and now TEXTING!): more like speech writing
- have blurred the line between speech and writing to the point that hybrid forms are emerging.
- people refer to real time instant messaging as "talking"
- this frame of "talk" helped to shape the STYLISTIC INNOVATIONS and reinforce the ideological association of IM with INFORMAL SPEECH rather than writing.---want to reposition IM and in many cases text messaging as "speaking" (in written form)
- also indicative of a SPEECH COMMUNITY attempting to set itself apart from other speech communities
- "be" & "like" use increases from 6% to 50% from 2003-2006
LITERACY: The ability to read and write (personal location)...but literacy is situated not in the individual, but in society (social location). Therefore, literacy interrelates with the workings of power. (Gee)
- reading and writing are socially embedded in all cultures.
- written texts can influence orality (conversations) and visa versa.
- This definition involves critical thinking about what one reads, as well as expanding the term to encompass oral forms of literacy.
"The Workforce Investment Act of 1998 defines literacy as 'an individual's ability to read, write, speak in English, compute and solve problems at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job, in the family of the individual and in society.' This is a broader view of literacy than just an individual's ability to read, the more traditional concept of literacy. As information and technology have become increasingly shaped our society [sic], the skills we need to function successfully have gone beyond reading, and literacy has come to include the skills listed in the current definition."
- This definition is important as it looks at literacy, at least to some extent, from a more contextualized perspective.
- The definition of 'literate', then, depends on the skills needed within a particular culture and environment.
On the way to becoming a book, the 'literacy' part of our title has taken on meanings that go beyond the simple definition of 'reading and writing' as we had conceived of it in 1984....we acknowledge that the word literacy itself has come to mean competence, knowledge and skills (Dubin). Take, for example, common expressions such as 'computer literacy,' "civic literacy,' 'health literacy,' and a score of other usages in which literacy stands for know-how and awareness of the first word in the expression. (p. vi)The authors go on to state that:
The past decade has been marked by significant new directions in literacy research brought about by questions which seek to discover how literacy functions in families...in communities...and in workplaces... What does it mean to be 'literate' as a member of a particular culture? What are the patterns of literacy use within fields of work, within professions, within age-groups? (p. vii)Hiebert (1991) takes an explicitly constructivist perspective to the definition of literacy:
For some time now, a new perspective on literacy, and the learning processes through which literacy is acquired, has been emerging. This new perspective does not consist of old ideas with a new name, but rather it represents a profound shift from a text-driven definition of literacy to a view of literacy as active transformation of texts. In the old view, meaning was assumed to reside primarily within text, whereas, in the new view, meaning is created through an interaction of reader and text. (p. 1)Langer (1991) takes this notion of interaction of reader with text a step further, contrasting "literacy as the act of reading and writing and literacy as ways of thinking" (p. 13). This author brings up the notion that the standards for literacy depend on the context within which one functions: "...literacy can be viewed in a broader and educationally more productive way, as the ability to think and reason like a literate person, within a particular society" (p. 11). The author argues that:
It is the culturally appropriate way of thinking, not the act of reading or writing, that is most important in the development of literacy. Literacy thinking manifests itself in different ways in oral and written language in different societies, and educators need to understand these ways of thinking if they are to build bridges and facilitate transitions among ways of thinking. (p. 13)Most authors also typically maintain the notion that comprehension and use of written text is central to literacy.
- Steelman, Pierce and Koppenhaver's definition is a good example: "To be literate is to be able to gather and to construct meaning using written language" (p 201).
- Foley (1994): "[f]or the purposes of this discussion, the term 'literacy' will be used broadly to refer to the mastery of language, in both its spoken (or augmented) and written forms, which enables an individual to use language fluently for a variety of purposes" (p. 184). Yet this author also cautions that while "[t]here is general agreement today that spoken language abilities are closely related to the development of literacy skills in the normal population" (p. 185), "[l]inguistic ability, as opposed to speech production ability, appears to be the more critical factor" (p. 186).
- Literacy Events: occasions in which written language is integral to the nature of participants interactions and their interpretive processes and strategies (Heath)
- stresses the situated nature of literacy - literacy events always take place in social contexts.
- have social interaction rules which regulate the type and amount of talk about what is written and define ways in which oral language reinforces, denies, extends, or sets aside the written material
- Literacy Practice: the general cultural ways of utilizing written language (Hamilton and Barton)
- literacy events are activities, and observable episodes, literacy practices are NOT specific, observable occurrences, but general NORMS regarding how written texts tend to be interpreted, produced and discussed
AUTONOMOUS VS. IDEOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO STUDYING LITERACY
- Autonomous model suggest literacy and its development will have the same effect regardless of the culture in which it arises - independent of its social context
- orality is destined to produce writing which is a mark of advanced thinking
- GREAT DIVIDE between oral and literate societies (primitive/civilized)
- Ideological models oppose this view and believe that, there is NO ove-racrching and context free characterization of the cognitive and social consequences of literacy. So, this model focuses on the ACTIVITIES, EVENTS, IDEOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTS, associated with particular occurrences of literacies.
- there are no universal attributes of literate sociaties
- literacy skills are never acquired neutrally
- reveals situated approaches to literacy
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