Reading the weather: ruling passions, numeracy and reading practices in an Australian farming community

Abstract

Research on multi‐modality has expanded our understanding of reading: as well as reading written text, the social semiotic perspective of Kress and van Leeuwen suggests that we read images, and the work of Moss explores children watching television in terms of reading practices. Research in the New Literacy Studies has expanded both the notion of what counts as reading and where we look for reading practices. In this case study I will examine the reading practices of an unemployed teenage boy in an Australian farming community. I will show how one of his ruling passions, the weather, leads him to engage in a variety of reading practices (and associated writing practices) in a variety of semiotic modes, drawing in different ways on numeracy knowledge. These range from reading (and recording) rainfall levels, reading weather charts and weather reports on television and indeed reading the signs of weather changes in the environment surrounding the farm where he lives with his family. None of these are reading practices in the conventional written‐text‐oriented sense, yet all of them contribute to his ruling passion for reading the weather. I conclude this case study by arguing that both research on multi‐modality and the New Literacy Studies point in a similar direction: towards expanding our notions of what counts as reading and the contexts where reading occurs.