What is literacy?

What is illiteracy?

What are the characteristics of a literate person?

(Tara, Tyler, Anderson and Silvia)

 

Literacy can be understood through its narrow and broad claims. Its narrow claim describes literacy as an object to be obtained and a skill to be learned in which a language user reads and writes within a specific code. Its broad claim describes literacy as a process through which one makes sense of the world around them and responds to it.  

 

Illiteracy is a concept derived from the narrow definition of literacy in which those who "have" literacy create boundaries to describe those who "do not have" it. Thus, someone who is unable to read and write in any language--as prescribed by those who determine what literacy is--is categorized as illiterate. For example, a teacher who views literacy as specific reading and writing practices then determines what her students need to know based on her construction of what they cannot yet do.

 

The characteristics of a literate person, then, are those practices deemed acceptable by the dominant culture. So in the United States today, certain abilities to read and write describe the "literate" person. But even then, various contexts determine which literacy skills are desirable. For example, the business manager is expected to read and write in a particular manner suitable for business practices, while the Twitter user engages in a form of social media literacy based on language confined to 140 characters.