We’ll use Perusall to annotate and read together.
Blog 2
We have all been trying to define what literacy is and I think the only way that is possible is to look it as “literacy as social”. Svwed, Scribner, Williams, and Franklin have all proved that literacy is known to be different in every social manner. Svwed gives the example of reading street signs as a surviving part of literacy. Scribner tries to divide literacy into three different genres and Williams describes the anxiety that comes along with the understanding of being literate. I enjoyed reading Keri Franklin’s article most. I think it addresses a bigger issue. She describes how she feels nervous of practicing the writing techniques of Twitter and that is absurd to me because personally that isn’t something I would be nervous about, but it is the same situation as being nervous for a job interview. This is what all these authors are trying to address is that literacy has a variety of positions. Franklin says herself that when she would write on Twitter her main goal was to appeal to her audience and get them to tweet back. I know that even myself, whether I am on Facebook or Instagram, whatever I am posting I hope my audience will find it appealing to them and that I hope to get so many “likes” or “comments” on it. This is just the same as writing a professional resume. People hope their reviewer will be impressed by it. When a person is in a job interview they respond in a polite, professional way as opposed to how they talk to their friend. Literacy is social because it is established as a way of appealing to what is being presented to. In our community this is how we advance our literacy. Whereas in the case study of the Vai, those people keep a private diary/journal and they write letters frequently. This is for their personal benefit and their personal advancement in literacy. Someone might argue that Facebook is our modern day diary alike to the Vai’s, but on Facebook we don’t practice our grammar. Our posts are not judged on that and they are accepted if they are grammatically incorrect.
Most of all literacy is social because it is always changing, always advancing or being abbreviated, or exploring new ways social interaction. Literacy is social and I think that is its best definition.
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One Reply to “Blog 2”
Thasnks for the great blog. Now i feel i don’t have to read the next readings. Ha. Good overview. When i read my personality really comes out and I am one sarcastic dude. When scribner writes of the three metaphors, it hits me in the symantic craw. A metaphor “is” the fundamental comparison of two unlike things. So when Scribner says; “literacy as social” she is using similie. My judgment of a scholar using incorrect linguinstical terms makes it hard to understand and read. i find it hard to be “definitional.” In your conclusion you say “literacy is social” i get it and understand. I would ask you to not be so finite in stating that literacy is social is the best definition. Because the whole point of “what is literacy” is to manufacture the argument that there is no one definition. I will proport literacy is convoluted; literacy is a convoluted way of describing a simple device. dictionary.com