Literacy to me is much more than just if an individual can read and write. People say that children of this generation are not literate, but in Andrea Lunsford's article "Our Semi-literate Youth? Not So Fast", she argues that while yes children do text with abbreviations such as "Whadda-ya-know" and "How r u", they use different styles of writing to suit different audiences. I completely agree with this because I personally change my writing style for my audience. If I were writing this as a text to a friend and not in a blog, my writing style would change significantly. Lunsford says "these young people are for the most part aware of the context and audience for their writing- and they will make the adjustments necessary to address them effectively." Also, in Sylvia Scribner's article, "Literacy in Three Metaphors", Scribner makes a very good point and that is, "Literacy is an outcome of cultural transmission; the individual child or adult does not extract the meaning of written symbols through personal interaction with the physical objects that embody them." I could not agree more with this statement, if the individuals teaching us literacy are not doing a good job then we will not be very literate. I am not the only one who agrees with this as well, Lunsford agrees that the underlining problem with semi-literate children may actually lie with the instructors. Another thing that both Scribner and Lunsford agree upon is that literacy changes over time. Individuals of the last generation were illiterate in their own ways, they were more likely to miss spell a word. Now with technology, kids are more likely to use the wrong word, for example there, their, and they're. Lastly, one thing that has not changed over time in my opinion is Scribner's metaphor, literacy is power. By being literate, societies are more capable of analyzing situations and taking action to make a just society. All in all, literacy is shaped by many different things, I believe that Carr is right that google is making us stupid, Hedges is right that people mainly listen or choose things based on pictures and not reading, Lunsford is right that instructors may be the ones making children semi-literate, and Scribner is right that literacy can mean so many different things. There are always going to be semi-literate people in the world, but what makes them semi-literate changes from generation to generation with improving technology.
It's funny to discuss the adaptive nature of writing these days while writing a piece in blog form- this is definitely a perfect example of how short, precise writing in this day and age can still play a large role in society despite its new form. There is no limit to what you can write on here, so the honesty could potentially be a factor in increasing literacy, do you think? I mean, if people can learn to read and write through people's blogs, I'd say even something as strict as these basic functions have the ability to adapt as much as technology and writing styles are. I really like your breakdown of the four authors, though, because I think your interpretation is both precise and dead-on!
ReplyDeleteInteresting comment, Brooke, about blogs allowing no limit to what people can write. I think we often forget about the material conditions of writing. If we were writing in a pre-industrial time, I imagine paper could be expensive enough that it would be a limiting factor in how much we write. Now the availability of computers and the internet are limiting factors in access more so than quantity of writing.
ReplyDeleteGood post, Bill, to start sorting out these ideas on literacy.