Cross-Cultural Approaches to LiteracyBrian V. Street Cross-Cultural Approaches to Literacy, investigates the meanings and uses of literacy in different cultures and societies. In contrast to previous studies, where the focus of research has been on aspects of cognition, education and on the economic 'consequences' of literacy, these largely ethnographic essays bring together anthropological and linguistic work written over the last ten years. Accounts of literacy practices in a variety of locations, including Great Britain, the United States, Africa, the South Pacific and Madagascar, illustrate how these practices vary from one context to another, and challenge the traditional view that literacy is a single, uniform skill, essential to functioning in a modern society. |
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activities adolescents adult affect African Aladura alofa Ambositra Amharic anthropology Arabic authority Cambridge University Press Chou Christian Church clan classroom code-switching collaborative collaborative writing context contrast cultural discourse discussion domain elders English literacy ethnographic example Funaafuti function Gapun gender genres Goody Hispanic Hmong Hmong language Horn of Africa ideological individual interaction interpretation involved Islam karamoko Kem's knowledge Kulick language Laos letters linguistic literacy event literacy practices literacy skills literate lives London Madagascar Mamolena Mende missionaries model of literacy morimen Moroccan Arabic Muslim Nukulaelae oral organisation Oshitelu Pao Youa paper Papua Papua New Guinea participants political pumoi Qur'an reading and writing relationships religious role script Seal Bay Sierra Leone social meanings society Somali speech talk teacher Tok Pisin traditional vernacular writing village women words Yoruba Youa's Zafimaniry
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Page 5 - My argument will be that there is a transition from utterance to text both culturally and developmentally and that this transition can be described as one of increasing explicitness, with language increasingly able to stand as an unambiguous or autonomous representation of meaning.
Page 5 - By isolating thought on a written surface, detached from any interlocutor, making utterance in this sense autonomous and indifferent to attack, writing presents utterance and thought as uninvolved with all else, somehow self-contained, complete.
Page 7 - Studies support an ideological model of literacy which signals explicitly that literacy practices are aspects not only of culture but also of power structures (Street, 1995; Baynham, 1995). Viewed in this way, school-sanctioned literacy - or 'Literacy', as referred to by Street (1995: 14) - is just one of a multiplicity of literacies which take place in people's lives, in different domains, for a variety of purposes and in different languages.