Literacy and Literacies: Texts, Power and Identity (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Literacy and literacies: Texts, power and identity by James Collins and Richard Blot Peter Unseth Literacy and literacies: Texts, power and identity. By James Collins and Richard Blot. (Studies in the social and cultural foundations of language.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xx, 217. ISBN 0521596610. $21.95. Collins and Blot write as part of the new literacy studies (NLS), the movement that rejects literacy as a set of ‘autonomous’ skills and stresses the varying uses and practices of literacy situated in different cultures and eras. It must be kept in mind, however, that in NLS ‘literacy’ has been broadened to include much more than decoding strings of symbols comprising texts, a step that is both its strength and its weakness. C&B’s contribution to NLS is the study of how ‘texts, power, and identity’ can inform the search for ways to wrestle with both local and global aspects of literacy; they devote a chapter to each, followed by a chapter of synthesis. C&B bring a significant amount of French scholarship to the attention of English readers, which is a positive step if one agrees with Jacques Derrida. Those who do not follow postmodern and poststructuralist ways of thinking will find much that makes them uncomfortable, including the strong focus on power and balkanized identities. But all will find a rich variety of case studies and analyses to ponder. C&B spend much time arguing against the idea that literacy leads toward certain predictable results, such as economic development, higher cognitive functions, and ‘civilization’. But they seem to lump together those who hold these dubious assumptions with those who hold to the idea of a narrow definition of literacy as ‘language-writing’. They leave no room for those who believe that there is a need for a definition of literacy that focuses on decoding (the symbols of a text to understand the words that the author intended), but who do not believe that literacy predictably leads to certain results, individual or societal. C&B wrestle with what constitutes ‘literacy’. They seem to be driven to identify something in every culture as a form of ‘literacy’. Amerindian picture-writing, rejected as ‘writing’ by such scholars as Florian Coulmas (The Blackwell encyclopedia of writing systems, Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), represents the practice of literacy to C&B, which is not surprising. But they go much further and speak of ‘a conception of writing that would include ritual insignia, ritual artifacts, and the prayers and songs attached thereto’ (160). But, if everything is literacy, then nothing is literacy. Certainly there is a great need for ethnographies of literacy and for a sensitivity by outsiders to the situated practices in which people employ reading and writing, but this still requires a narrow concept of literacy which refers to understanding the words of the author. This is not an elitist position, but rather a call for returning to a specific concept allowing us to speak of people learning the skills needed to read their language in a way that allows them to comprehend the intended message of the author, typically propositions. This should be differentiated from how people use print media. First-graders may interact with a variety of media, but they still have to learn to read (whether by phonics, whole language, or some other method). We need to distinguish between this traditional view of ‘literacy’ and the NLS view. Until this is clarified, NLS writers will continue to confuse, maybe alienate, those who teach people to read their languages. Peter Unseth Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics and SIL Copyright © 2005 Linguistic Society of America