English 803 Class Notes
Literacy and Language
1/29/08
What is literacy?
Composition studies—literacy is a relationship with community
Perhaps no illiteracy under this definition
Reading the context
Functional literacy
Reading and writing
Illiteracy—can people be illiterate?
Understand individual words, but not the meaning
Understanding?
Meanings are created in a community
Literacy in a community such as farming—specialized types of knowledge
People with wisdom vs. intelligence
Even if you can’ read a word
Is knowledge of farming literacy?
is literacy higher order thinking? Ong—knower vs. the known
meta thinking
in Chinese just recognizing the characters is literacy
in translating literacy to other cultures, we lose the higher order levels?
“It’s kind of an academic catch 22.”
You only argue about this in the classroom.
But literacy does shape what gets learned
Heath—Ways with Words—learn the literacy you need for a particular setting
Scribner and Cole
Why is literacy the norm?
Society attaches value to literacy—what literacy represents
Literacy = education
Is literacy any knowledge approved by a community?
Multiple literacies
What is language?
Knowing a particular language may define whether or not you’re literate?
Being illiterate might actually mean you just don’t know a particular language
Learning the language then would make you literate
Language is a communication tool and a way to show identity
Can we think of language as a technology? Ana—the answer is no
Jyun—the answer is yes
We can machines to communicate and we do the same thing with language
Is a machine just a tool to bridge time and space—then language is too
With an additional language you can think of it as a technology
Languaging (Friedman)—how the mind uses language—unconscious—how language is processed
Language is a tool.
Literacy is how you use the tool.--system
Literacy is using the tool.
Language is an imperfect systematic/rule governed tool/process?
Literacy is an imperfect systematic/rule governed process.
Words you speak create a reality.
Language is totally contextualized.
A hammer is a tool.
Literacy is how we apply the tool.
Is literacy a technology?
What is technology? Tools
Hard to separate the two things
Language doesn’t create emotion without the social context
Can we separate language from the social context.
Without the context is it language? Or is it just sound?
Can tools have emotion
Do words just have the power to raise emotions in us?
Language as an extension of ourselves--identities
The good/bad of a word is a literacy issue
Literacy is aligning the context of the word usage—multiple literacy
Bad words
Damn
Damn good
Honorifics—if you use he vs. you (you formal or you informal)
Jack Goody—studied ancient Summarian texts
--looked at some of the earliest writing
Lists/inventory was the earliest use of writing
But over time, people get the idea to make lists of lists
Meta level thinking comes with literacy
Language shaping cognition---the use of the words/their meanings changes how we think