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We might do badly in an official literacy test, but be very literate in the context of our work or hobby.
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We might do badly in an official literacy test, but be very literate in the context of our work or hobby.
Mary Hamilton and David Barton are key figures in the ‘new literacies’ movement, where specific literacies are identified among different communities. People might fail literacy tests which assume knowledge of an office workplace or a wide set of world knowledge. But they might be highly literate within their own workplace, their hobby, or their faith group. Hamilton and Barton call them ‘situated literacies’.1
Our approach is based upon a belief that literacy only has meaning within its particular context of social practice and does not transfer unproblematically across contexts; there are different literacy practices in different domains of social life, such as education, religion, workplaces, public services, families, community activities; they change over time and these different literacies are supported and shaped by the different institutions and social relationships. (page 379)
I use the term ‘conversational literacy’ to describes something similar:2 our understanding, either as creators or users of communication channels, of how a particular communication is shaped by its conversational context. It recognizes that each participant brings their own motives and experience to a conversation, and it understands how any document is likely to be interpreted in a particular context and the range of inferences that it is reasonable for readers to make.
1. Mary Hamilton, and David Barton (2000) The international adult literacy survey: What does it really measure? International Review of Education 46: 377–89.
2. Robert Waller (2012) Graphic literacies for a digital age: the survival of layout, The Information Society: An International Journal, 28:4, 236-252.