LiterAte, litterBin or liter-C? Some issues on literacy in the contemporary semiotic landscape

Elisabetta AdamiUniversity of Veronaelisabetta.adami@univr.it

Stellar - Alpine Rendez-Vous - 30th November to 3rd December

Workshop: Technology-enhanced learning in the context of technological, societal and cultural transformationSession: Literacy (J. Cook, E. Adami, M. Boeck)  

Literacy? A social semiotic view

From: ‘(the knowledge of) the use of the resource of writing’ (Kress,

2003: 24) -> cf. literate

Extended (in English only) to: ‘certain kinds of production-skills associated more or less

closely with aspects of communication’ (Kress, 2003: 23) -> ‘being able to make readings of texts of the elite, which

conform to the readings of the elite culture’ (Kress, 2003: 23) Text readings and text productions -> ± ‘competence’

The egg-and-chicken issue on Literacy

Practices Conventions of use:

approved, ‘proper’ semiotic acts in contexts, and stigmatized, ‘inappropriate’ semiotic acts in contexts

Descriptions (academics, critics…)

Institutionalized conventions

Prescribed and proscribed semiotic practices

(taught) Literacy

The egg-and-chicken issue in the context of established genres

Established (written) genres: CV; academic articles… ‘vertical’ power relationships

Standardization of conventions Literacy = knowing the established conventions

how a CV / academic article MUST be written School: teaching the norms

enable students to master a genre and enter an elite community

The egg-and-chicken issue in the context on ‘New Media’

Non-Established genres: videoblogs, txts, podcasts, social networking etc. ‘horizontal’ power relationships

Standard = ‘difference-within-attuning’ (Adami, 2009) Literacy -> rhetoric (Kress, 2008)

from competence to (creative and ad hoc) agency Schools:

teach (which) norms??? description – institutionalization – pre/proscriptions

provide students with the abilities needed to be a rhetor? Assess the situation and creatively act to make the difference

The here-and-now issue

New everyday media New affordances = new potentials in the

mechanisms of communicating – representing – accessing and contributing to info and knowledge

What changes in the way we make meaning and act semiotically (= we learn)? In the mechanisms/practices of sign-making In the mechanisms/practices of communication

What can educators make of these changes?

The contemporary media landscape: semiotic affordances

Many devices

The contemporary media landscape: semiotic affordances

Many devices - interconnected spaces –

The contemporary media landscape: Changes in representation

Many devices - interconnected spaces – One shared semiotic affordance: Copy-and-paste

Representation is more readily made through selection (assemblage) and recontextualization than through transcription (Adami, 2009)

At the Biennale with iphone…

The contemporary media landscape: changes in communication

Many devices – One shared social affordance: Individualized participation in networks/chains of

semiosis according to the participant’s interests (Adami, 2009)

rather than Cooperation and shared understanding (unlike

defined by Grice 1965, 1975; Hall 1980; Sperber and Wilson 1986)

The contemporary media landscape: changes in communication

Many devices – One shared social affordance: Individualized participation in networks/chains of

semiosis according to the participant’s interests (Adami, 2009)

Cooperation (shared understanding)

Usability (selection, transformation, recontextualization)

The big issue: Coherence Mechanisms/practices of sign-making:

Copy-and-paste

Scattering of coherence patterns (Adami, 2009)

Mechanisms/practices of communication:Individualized participation

acting on topic (= cooperating) is irrelevant

From content to (re)context

Coherence on topic (content) cf. Halliday & Hasan 1976; van Dijk 1985;

Fairclough 1992

Usability of forms (contexts)

selection, assemblage, transformation, forward, recontextualization

Successful communication

Chains of semiosis

Here-and-now Questions for education

From coherence in contents to forms in contexts:1. What skills/abilities/capabilities are

Developed the most / the least? Required the most / the least?

2. What happens to literacy? From ‘what in what form’ to ‘how-to where and to

whom’?

Egg-and-chicken Questions for education

1. What is gained and what is lost?2. Where are we heading to?

1. Teach the most required abilities?2. Teach the lost-in-transition ones?

3. Is the description-pre/proscription cycle avoidable?

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