The phrase literacy makes many things come to mind. Like being able to read or to write is the main things. When you look at the word literacy alone, it makes you think about reading. That is what’s been taught to us, but what does it really mean? Looking through James Paul Gee’s “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction” and Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe
with Brittney Moraski and Melissa Pearson’s “Becoming Literate in the Information Age: Cultural Ecologies and the Literacies of Technology” we can really take into account what Literacy really means.
To look at what Gee says, he talks about how there is plenty of discourse around the the idea of what literacy is and how it is more than just “understanding a language”. It’s not just about what you say but rather how you say it. I believe that this is extremely important when it comes to literacy in writing. It’s one thing to just write something, but it’s another to just write something without real meaning behind it. To understand how to use words, how to form them into a sentence, all of that is important when it comes to literacy.
Literacy In Technology
When looking at Hawisher and Selfe’s article, they talk about today’s technological literacies in the workplace and in our daily lives. It’s extremely important to learn how to not only use a computer, but also how it works on a fundamental level. You need to understand how to properly use it, from turning it on and off, what the keys do, and so on. The literacy of being able to use computers of any kind of device is extremely important, especially when one isn’t fluent in being able to adjust a computer. From this article the idea of fluency and literacy go hand in hand, one goes with the other like they’re good friends. To be fluent means that you understand the complexities that come with literacy and it’s extremely important to understand this fact. The article explains this well and that learning to be literate in technology is important for everyone, and it would benefits those around each other.
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