What Is Literacy?

A ten-minute (yeah, right) brainstorm based on ENG820 thus far

My primary understanding of the meaning of the word literacy is unchanged; I continue to see it as the ability to use symbol systems, usually both by deciphering others’ use of them and by producing original communiqués using them.  This basic definition is the one appropriated by many fields and applied to many symbol systems.  Wysocki and Johnson-Eilola lament this use of the term because it brings with it too many faulty assumptions that any kind of “literacy” is “some basic, neutral, context-less set of skills whose acquisition will bring the bearer economic and social goods and privileges” (352).  Wysocki and Eilola question the cultural implications and baggage associated with reading/writing literacy or lack thereof, which is masked by overly flexible use of the word.  Fox’s explanation of how literacy instructions for African-Americans following emancipation was a vehicle for the behaviors and values whites would place on blacks supports their perspective.  Gee outlines clearly a second part of a defintion of literacy to take these issues into account, explaining that literacy is not only the understanding of the symbol system itself but of when and how to use it based on social and cultural contexts.  Bartholomae’s discussion of college students supports this idea, since students must “fake it until they make it” as they recognize new contexts for their writing but are not yet literate in the ways that scholars use language in those contexts.

Ong and Olson further reveal often-unnoticed implications of literacy, since it cannot be assumed to be a skill a person acquires (or has deposited, in Freire’s terms) with little impact on the person’s thinking and behavior; in fact, gaining the ability to use the symbolic codes (presumably only of reading and writing, but potentially of others) changes the way we think about the content, delivery, and interpretation of ideas being communicated and about our interaction with our interlocutors.   Thus, literacy is an ability that changes not only our external interactions with others but also our internal cognitive processes.