Dawn Shakespeare
February 18, 2014
Synthesis of Literacy According to Street (2006), what may be deemed as the “New Literary Studies” may in fact represent a new tradition about the nature of literary, stressing not so much on literacy as a mental technology (applied technology) or a set of qualified skills and competencies but rather on “what it means to think of literacy as a social practice”. In their paper “Toward a Theory of New Literacies Emerging from the Internet and Other Information and Communication Technologies,” Leu et al. (2004) arrive at the same conclusion. According to them, the three basic elements of literacy – reading, reading instruction, and literacy instruction – are undergoing abrupt changes as new technologies acquire new literacies to fundamentally alter the ways in which literacies are exploited for the good. Street’s model does not isolate cultural and ideological assumptions that underlie this ‘new autonomous model of literacy.’ The purpose of which cannot be overstated. Recent research in new literacy studies suggests literary practices vary across cultural spaces and thus the effects of the different literacies vary by context. For Leu et al. (2004), new literacies not only change intermittently (with the emergence of new communication technologies) but also as responses to certain cultural challenges. However, the emphasis is different. In Street’s paper, the emphasis is on engaging social literacies with social acts (inside and outside the classroom, across various social spaces) and on creating a more ‘sociological’ model of literacy. Street (2006) notes that the so-called ‘autonomous’ model of literacy does not, in any way, take into consideration various literary practices in specific societies. It may also be considered a ‘ritualized’ practices, drawing on assumptions that are inherently Western and pro-logical in character.