Literacy Events and Literacy Practices Discussion Question
Humanities
In chapter 8, the textbook author discusses literacy events and literacy practices. I also briefly describe this in my welcome to week nine note to you. What I would like you to do for this week‘s quiz is to please describe an anecdote from your life or from someone else’s life that you know — or from a TV show or history, a novel, or social media — in which the written word plays a central role in whatever social drama is occurring. The example in the textbook of Pema Kumari’s letter is in example of the kind of anecdote that I would like you to identify and share; however, your anecdote does not need to be as long as that section in the textbook. It can be a couple of paragraphs.
What I would like you to do specifically is to describe in your anecdote two main things (1 paragraph for each):
(1) What is the the story or social drama that is unfolding, and what the written word source is (like a an important letter or legal document or text) that is playing a central role in this drama.
(2) In your view, what is the, literacy event, and what is/are the literacy practices, in this story (based on what you know about literacy isn’t the practices from chapter 8.)
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replay to this discussion with 4 sentances maxiumum :
Earlier in the semester, we have discussed ways and mechanisms that linguistic anthologists use to study an individual’s cognition of language through speech or orality. However, in this chapter, “Literacy Practices”, Ahearn shifts to the central topic to literacy whether that is through reading and writing but still recognizing how the social context/environment can shape that. Linguistic anthropologists first like to differentiate the two concepts, literacy events and literacy practices. Literacy events are never studied in isolation from social relations because they have a major role in the context it occurs, whether that be through email, or instant messaging. Literacy practices are more observable occurrences that occur as a general norm, routine or a habit an individual might inhibit. Thus, with these two concepts anthropologists have taken literacy and treated as a practice to understand social interaction amongst written texts. An interesting form of literacy practice that was studied and caught my attention was the preschoolers in the three communities that Heath studied. It stunned me to learn that the children who were from Maintown , a predominantly white community were considered to be well prepared to learn and interact in written texts once they started school. This was because reading and listening was enforced at such a small and parents also reinforced discussions about books outside of a so called ‘reading-time’, the children were always emerged in environments that involved literacy.
