Literacy

An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language

David Barton

• Verlag: Wiley-Blackwell
• Jahr: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781119485667
• Auflage: 2
• Thema: Lingue e linguistica
• Thema: Linguistica

This introduction to the expanding field of literacy studies has been fully revised for the second edition. It explores recent developments and new research that has contributed to our understanding of literacy practices, reflecting on the interdisciplinary growth of the study of reading and writing over the past decade.

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  An introductory textbook on the growing field of literacy studies, fully updated for the new edition
  

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  Includes new sections detailing recent completed studies of literacy practices, and the use of new technologies
  

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  Distinguishes between the competing definitions of literacy in contemporary society, and examines the language and learning theories which underpin new views of literacy
  

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  Now features additional material on cross-cultural perspectives, US-based examples, and information detailing current educational policy.
  
  

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An integrated approach to literacy

• Introduction
• Literacy in everyday life.
• The study of literacy
• Outline of the book

Introduction

Rapid technological and social change is affecting what we know and how we communicate. The nature of knowledge and the nature of communication are changing in fundamental ways, and literacy is central to this. Throughout the world, issues of literacy have moved to the top of the political agenda and in public debate everywhere there is perceived to be a crisis in education; literacy has become a contentious issue in schools and colleges, in the community and in political debate.

More than one hundred years after the introduction of compulsory schooling we do not have an educational system which turns out happy well-educated people. This can be demonstrated in many ways; with reference to reading and writing, it is generally agreed that around 10 per cent of adults in countries like Britain and the United States are not satisfied with their levels of literacy. After three decades of adult literacy provision in such countries, what was thought of as a minor social problem has not been solved; rather, basic education provision for adults now has to be seen as part of normal educational provision. Pressures are coming from governments and elsewhere for education to account for what it achieves and there are new demands from rapidly changing technologies. This is happening throughout industrialized countries. Meanwhile, in developing countries there is a realization that literacy rates are not increasing in the ways optimistically predicted before the year 2000 and there are debates on how to achieve ‘education for all’.

Competing views of what education is for are being made more explicit. People may disagree about the nature of ‘the crisis’ but there is public unease about what is going on. The purpose of schools and education has often been taken for granted: more and more it is now being called into question. Questions about reading and writing turn up in a wide range of places: in discussions about falling standards in education; in calls for Plain English in documents; in debates about the economic cost of education, the requirements for a trained workforce, the effects of new technologies on our lives, the need for adult literacy provision.

All sorts of people talk about literacy and make assumptions about it, both within education and beyond it. The business manager bemoans the lack of literacy skills in the workforce. The politician wants to eradicate ‘the scourge of illiteracy’. The radical educator attempts to empower and liberate people. The literary critic sorts the good writers from the bad writers. The teacher diagnoses reading difficulties and prescribes a programme to solve them. The pre-school teacher watches literacy emerge. These people all have powerful definitions of what literacy is. They have different theories of literacy, different ideas of ‘the problem’ and what should be done about it. Public discussion in the media is often at odds with what is going on in schools. Ideas about a ‘literacy crisis’ are constantly in the newspapers but public discussion of literacy issues is not very sophisticated; there is widespread ignorance about language, and the most simplistic approaches are latched on to.

Part of this current conflict revolves around what is meant by literacy and to some extent the disputes can be viewed as struggles between different definitions of literacy. The aim of this book is to try to understand the different ways in which people talk about reading and writing, and to draw together new views of literacy which have been developed in different areas. The question I am asking throughout is: what is literacy? In exploring this topic, I will cover many very different aspects of literacy. There are two starting points for the discussion: first, that of examining people’s everyday reading and writing; and, secondly, the many areas of study which are contributing to new understandings of literacy.

Literacy in everyday life

The first starting point is people’s everyday lives and how they make use of reading and writing. In going about their ordinary daily life, people today are constantly encountering literacy. This is true for most people in the world. Imagine a person waking up in the morning: they may well be woken up at seven o’clock in the morning by an alarm which turns on a radio automatically. The first voice they hear might well be someone reading the radio news to them, a written text which is being spoken. Going for breakfast, they pick up the newspaper from the door mat along with some mail. Breakfast, in England at least, might consist of drinking a cup of tea while listening to the radio, browsing through the newspaper and opening some letters. Other people might be present, adults and children, and they might participate in these activities. Already, at the beginning of the day, there have been several literacy events, each quite different from the other.

I have used this example elsewhere; I like it because it demonstrates that how people use literacy is tied up with the particular details of the situation and that literacy events are particular to a specific community at a specific point in history. The scene I describe may be very familiar to you or it may seem very distant. The precise details may not be right: there are many countries today where mail and newspapers are not delivered to the door in time for breakfast. I was thinking of Lancaster, England; in seemingly similar places such as Lancaster, Pennsylvania or Lancaster, Ontario things may be very different. It is only in some cultures that it is thought normal to start the day sitting at a table and simultaneously to listen to a radio, read a newspaper and drink a cup of tea, and where it may be acceptable and polite to ignore other people eating at the table, or to talk intermittently to them while reading. What is polite or acceptable in one situation may not be in another, and such behaviour might not be accepted at a different time of day or with different people present.

There are several other things about literacy which this example illustrates. The first point to be made is that literacy impinges on people in their daily lives, whether or not they regularly read books or do much writing. Literacy is embedded in these activities of ordinary life. It is not something which is done just at school or at work. It is carried out in a wide variety of settings. For the school child much of the literacy in the home may be quite unlike that encountered in the school classroom. Secondly, several people can be involved in reading or in writing, and they may participate in various ways, each treating the written word differently. There are many ways of reading in a particular situation with a particular text. The various texts are recognized as distinct and are read in different ways – there are many ways of taking meaning from the text. Listening to the news broadcasts, scanning the morning papers, sorting through the different letters in the mail may all involve different participants acting in different ways.

This example has been concerned with reading, but there may well be some writing involved. Around breakfast time there may be a hurried letter to be written to the teacher, or a school form to be filled in. There may be a note to be left for someone, or a bill which has to be paid urgently. People write reminder notes for themselves at the beginning of the day and write in diaries and on calendars. Some people get up early to write personal letters or log on to their email before the bustle of the day begins.

Using an everyday event as a starting point provides a distinct view of literacy. The most common views of literacy start out from the educational settings in which literacy is typically taught, that is, the school classroom. The dominant definitions in society, then, are school-based definitions of literacy. These views of what literacy is are often at odds with what people experience in their everyday lives. This can be in a very straightforward way where the kinds of reading and writing which people do in their everyday lives are different from those done in school. It can be in people’s more general conceptions of literacy. Everyday literacy gives a richer view of literacy which demands a new definition of literacy, a new way of thinking about what is involved in reading and writing.

The main area for research on reading and writing up till now has been education. The main focus has been on individual learning. The main research paradigm has been psychological. Again this has been the most common approach. However, it is not just educators who are interested in literacy. If we look elsewhere, it is obvious that the more we dig at literacy, the richer it is. A wealth of recent ideas which are not encompassed by standard theories flood in from history, anthropology, sociology and a range of other disciplines. These ideas provide the second starting point for the exploration of literacy.

The study of literacy

There are many aspects of literacy to account for. Across a wide range of disciplines there has been an explosion of interest in literacy. Topics which were not mentioned a few years ago are now being researched and there is so much work going on that it is difficult to keep up with the books and articles which are being published. There are many strands of research taking the subject in different directions. It is necessary to bring these strands together, and much of this book will be devoted to doing this. To give an idea of what is ahead here is a brief list of some of the areas where there has been renewed interest in literacy and where we might look for ideas. The individual people working in these areas are moving in the same direction and I want to point to the unity of ideas in these seemingly diverse topics.

Across a range of disciplines the term literacy has become a code word for more complex views of what is involved in reading and writing. In each of the following subjects, people are making some contribution to the contemporary study of literacy:

• historical development
• the study of different cultures and subcultures
• oral cultures without literacy
• languages, scripts, bilingual literacy
• written and spoken language
• situated cognition
• social understanding of science and of new technologies
• processes of reading and writing
• pre-school literacy, emergent literacy
• learning in schools
• learning at home, in the community, at work
• adult learning, adult literacy, adults returning to study
• the politics of literacy, literacy and power

These are the topics I will be drawing upon throughout the book. I will provide references to work in these areas as they are encountered. In all these areas people are questioning what is meant by literacy. Although there are similarities, in some ways these different approaches with different philosophies underlying them are asking different questions and using different methodologies. There needs to be a way of talking about literacy which begins to bring together the many facets described so far. I will provide an overview of current approaches to literacy in these different areas at the same time as ensuring that they contribute to a common understanding of reading and writing. This is a complex interdisciplinary endeavour and I hope that ...