Young adult literacy learners describe the text–orality nexus

Abstract

AbstractResearch has described the importance of orality at work and in everyday life but little agreement currently exists on how to theorize modern orality. This study explores how young adult literacy learners thought about and employed their textual (print) literacy within the oral contexts of their lives. We interviewed 88 mainly unemployed young persons undertaking literacy training to assess how their literacy fitted within their everyday lives, exploring their learning, employment, motivation, persistence, barriers to learning, and power dynamics. Respondents saw their textual literacy as situated within a matrix of everyday interpersonal communication more than as stand-alone functional skills, describing how literacy integrates with oral-experiential lifeworlds such as at work. Empirical evidence was provided to support the recent work of scholars who are building theory in the text–orality nexus. This study provides insights into the oral world of people with liminal (threshold) textual literacy; since such individuals are necessarily more oral than literate in their everyday life experience, they provide unique insights into how their orality intersects with use of textual information.