A textbook definition of the word “literacy” is the ability to read or write. However, literacy is not limited to reading and writing text and words, as literacy exists for comprehending something like speech, or reading signs while on the road. An important sub section of literacy is computer literacy, which is the ability to comprehend and understand computers. I bring this up because computer literacy and regular literacy is important to the two texts I will be discussing today. First is Gail Hawisher & Cynthia Selfe’s Becoming Literate in the Information Age: Cultural Ecologies and the Literacies of Technology, which discusses two women’s journeys to learn computer literacy, and the other is James Paul Gee’s Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction, which discusses more traditional literacy topics. The relation between the two is that both discuss important aspects of literacy to readers of today.
Becoming Literate in the Information Age… discusses how two women who were previously unfamiliar with computers learned how to become literate with computers. The two subjects were Melissa Pearson, a woman born in the 1960’s, and Brittany Moraski, a woman born in the 1980’s. As noted in the experiment, due to being born in a different generation, Moraski had much more experience with computers as she grew up with computers being a more common item in households, as well as using them in school. On the other hand, Pearson had much less experience due to computers not being as common when she grew up in the 1960’s and 1970’s. This shows how cultural and generational gaps can have major effects on what people learn about, and what skills they have.
Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction discusses several important topics related to literacy, linguistics, and discourse. When talking about discourse, the author made a note to distinguish between Discourse and discourse. Discourse is a way people will act and behave in relation to their surroundings, while discourse is language used among people. There are two types of Discourses, Primary Discourses, which is Discourse applied to our normal environment, and Secondary Discourses, which are applied to environments outside our normal ones. Discourses can also be grouped in to dominant Discourse and non-dominant Discourse, with dominant Discourse being used in general speech and human interactions, while non-dominant Discourse is used in more selective social groups. Overall, all of these have their own effects on how we understand and comprehend language and social situations.
The texts we discussed serve to show how literacy is affected by our upbringings and social situations. For example, computer literacy is affected by your generational upbringing, with people who grew up in later generations having more knowledge and experience with computers due to growing up with them and using them throughout their lives. For literacy related to social situations, people use different Discourses depending on the environment and social situation they are in. Overall, literacy is heavily effected by the numerous factors that influence how someone may grow up or behave.
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