MCuenca: Literacy Ain’t No Monkey Business

(The title aside this isn’t actually about monkeys or any monkey business, sadly.) 

In the Hamilton article, the section about literacy events and what defines those events caught my interest. Specifically, this part that states that a literacy event is ” any occasion in which a piece of writing is integral to the nature of participants interactions and their interpretive processes”. This can range from anything from tattoo’s to graffiti and anything in between and that’s not something that I’ve thought about before but as of reading this and discussing it in class I’ve realized how much we interact with literacy in so many different ways  throughout our everyday lives. As we move through the class it becomes clear to me that I still have so much to learn about literacy and what that term really means. Hamilton’s article gives a good perspective on how to look at the ways in which all of us interact differently with literacy.

For example, in the picture that I’ve chosen the man is reading the newspaper upside down. Why he’s doing that is not explicitly clear but we can make inferences from what is happening around this literacy event. Whether he’s reading upside down to show off, or as a form of doing tricks for money, or simply because he enjoys reading upside down what his action and participation with literacy is doing is attracting others to this event and in turn, they are in some way interacting with literacy too. It goes back to what Hamilton talked about with observing who is interacting with reading and  why and in what context. The man reading upside is actually creating a chain like effect and I found that to be really interesting. In part because the literacy that we ourselves create(whether that be wearing a t-shirt with text, or writing an email to someone, etc…) can affect others but it’s not something that we are constantly aware of or think about. It’s amazing to see how literacy impacts us in all sorts of ways and to see how others use and interact with literacy at their own unique level.