Musicking as Literacy: Possibilities and Pragmatisms for Literacies Learning

Abstract

Much work has been done in opening up the field of literacy learning through the work of the New Literacy Studies movement, multiliteracies pedagogy and multiple literacies theory, although the potential of music as a particular human artistic, aesthetic, social and emotional experience in connecting young people to their literacy learning is still relatively unmapped. This chapter will present some possibilities and pragmatisms for literacy learning, arising from a study that sought to map connections between music, literacy learning and the lives of teenagers. Theoretically and methodologically informed by narrative inquiry and poststructuralist thinking, in particular the work of Gilles Deleuze, the study investigated how literacy links to music in the lifeworlds of young people in an attempt to trouble presupposed distinctions between literacy and music.KeywordsMusicLiteracyMusickingMultiliteraciesPedagogyPoetry