I found this week’s readings to be a bit of a challenge on multiple fronts. One obstacle I had to overcome was getting myself to chew through the advanced language that was used in the articles. After finally untangling the language and getting some sense of what I was reading, the next hurdle was trying to make sense of what was actually being presented! However, after some time of mulling over the texts and digesting them, I believe I have some solid ground on which I can discuss James Paul Gee’s “LITERACY, DISCOURSE, AND LINGUISTICS: INTRODUCTION” and “Multiple Literacies, New Literacies, and Teacher Education” by Gina Cervetti, James Damico, and P. David Pearson.
James Paul Gee, being a linguist, takes a different approach than what most English majors are used to on the topic of “literacy”. He discusses how literacy is just a mere aspect, a fragment, of a larger whole: Discourse (with a capital “D”). Gee describes Discourse as a combination of everything that a person does to present themselves in a particular context, an “identity kit” as he puts it. There are subcategories of Discourse falling under Primary/Secondary and Dominant/Nondominant contexts. For the sake of brevity, I’ll comment that Gee’s approach to literacy is fascinating in that it adds a third dimension to the concept. By adding linguistics and identity to the mix, Gee paves the road for what Cervetti et al describe to be “multiple literacies”. In their paper, the authors endeavor to find a way to prepare future teachers on how best to educate their students in the field of literacy. Their suggestions primarily anchor to the notion that literacy can be had from multiple perspectives such as being technologically literate or culturally literate. They argue that when educators can reach their students in multiple literacies, the gap between understanding and nonunderstanding will be bridged.
If my understanding is correct, the two readings come to an intersection in which both seem to imply that literacy in print is simply literacy in its most basic form. In its most comprehensive version, literacy encompasses all that a person is and can be.
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