Dr John Postill

The study of media and literacy beyond the ideological paradigm

Paper to the symposium ‘Ecriture and Literacy: the constitution of a field of research in Great Britain and France’ École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) Paris
25 June 2007

Dr John Postill, University of Sheffield, UK

Abstract

In this paper I resume the dialogue between literacy studies and media studies that Brian Street opened up in January 2006. I start by seeking to clear up two of the conceptual muddles that we find in Anglophone literacy studies, namely the concept of ‘literacy’ itself with its narrow, normative core referent (the ability to read and write), and the much celebrated idea of ‘literacy as social practice’. I suggest that we abandon the English notion of ‘literacy’ as a theoretical concept (but retaining it as a useful emic notion) and explore possible areas of future collaboration between literacy studies and media studies, such as practice theory, social circulation, and multimodality.

References

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