Interactions Between People and Written Texts

The section of the Hamilton article titled “Interactions between people and written texts” resonated with me for two main reasons. The primary reason I chose to discuss this section in my blog post was because I felt it was a relatively simple concept to grasp and relate to. Secondly, the image I selected fits in perfectly with everything Hamilton laid out in the section regarding participants, setting, artifacts, and activities.

I connected each of Hamilton’s sub-points in the passage. The participants of literacy in this selection of photos involved humans, either an individual to a crowd. I saw this as reading a book by myself as well as reading a slide of a Powerpoint presentation in a large GE class. As for the setting, literacy between people and written texts can occur anywhere. If the physical location is not apparent, the words in the picture usually can indicate where the literacy is occurring. Legal notices could indicate a courthouse while a scoreboard would apply to a sporting event. The activity of literacy in these instances is not only reading, but can also involve discussion, displaying, and “disputing written texts of various sorts” (Hamilton, 28).

The picture I chose for this week just so happens to be a perfect illustration of “interactions between people and written texts. Four elementary school aged children gather around a large book (I chose to view the book as a dictionary, as it is quite large and lacks any visible illustrations) and appear to read something that was previously unknown to them.

The setting is a classroom, judging from the fact that there are two other students in the background. A teacher would be in the room but is not present in the picture.The participants are the four students surrounding the book. They are the ones directly interacting with the written text.The artifacts in the picture could include the table on which the book is placed, as well as a pencil behind the ear of the boy pointing to the text.The activity performed by the participants is reading. In this instance, reading has become a communal and social event. The picture depicts both boys and girls reading, something I think is culturally significant. I feel that this is important because in some cultures girls are not allowed to attend school to become literate.