LiterAte, litterBin or liter-C? Some issues on literacy in the contemporary semiotic landscape Elisabetta Adami University of Verona elisabetta.adami@u nivr.it Stellar - Alpine Rendez-Vous - 30th November to 3rd December Workshop: Technology-enhanced learning in the context of technological, societal and cultural transformation Session: Literacy (J. Cook, E. Adami, M. Boeck)
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LiterAte, litterBin or liter-C? Some issues on literacy in the contemporary semiotic landscape
Stellar - Alpine Rendez-Vous - 30th November to 3rd December
Workshop: Technology-enhanced learning in the context of technological, societal and cultural transformationSession: Literacy (J. Cook, E. Adami, M. Boeck)
Literacy? A social semiotic view
From: ‘(the knowledge of) the use of the resource of writing’ (Kress,
2003: 24) -> cf. literate
Extended (in English only) to: ‘certain kinds of production-skills associated more or less
closely with aspects of communication’ (Kress, 2003: 23) -> ‘being able to make readings of texts of the elite, which
conform to the readings of the elite culture’ (Kress, 2003: 23) Text readings and text productions -> ± ‘competence’
The egg-and-chicken issue on Literacy
Practices Conventions of use:
approved, ‘proper’ semiotic acts in contexts, and stigmatized, ‘inappropriate’ semiotic acts in contexts
Descriptions (academics, critics…)
Institutionalized conventions
Prescribed and proscribed semiotic practices
(taught) Literacy
The egg-and-chicken issue in the context of established genres
Established (written) genres: CV; academic articles… ‘vertical’ power relationships
Standardization of conventions Literacy = knowing the established conventions
how a CV / academic article MUST be written School: teaching the norms
enable students to master a genre and enter an elite community
The egg-and-chicken issue in the context on ‘New Media’
Non-Established genres: videoblogs, txts, podcasts, social networking etc. ‘horizontal’ power relationships
Standard = ‘difference-within-attuning’ (Adami, 2009) Literacy -> rhetoric (Kress, 2008)
from competence to (creative and ad hoc) agency Schools:
provide students with the abilities needed to be a rhetor? Assess the situation and creatively act to make the difference
The here-and-now issue
New everyday media New affordances = new potentials in the
mechanisms of communicating – representing – accessing and contributing to info and knowledge
What changes in the way we make meaning and act semiotically (= we learn)? In the mechanisms/practices of sign-making In the mechanisms/practices of communication
What can educators make of these changes?
The contemporary media landscape: semiotic affordances
Many devices
The contemporary media landscape: semiotic affordances
Many devices - interconnected spaces –
The contemporary media landscape: Changes in representation
Many devices - interconnected spaces – One shared semiotic affordance: Copy-and-paste
Representation is more readily made through selection (assemblage) and recontextualization than through transcription (Adami, 2009)
At the Biennale with iphone…
The contemporary media landscape: changes in communication
Many devices – One shared social affordance: Individualized participation in networks/chains of
semiosis according to the participant’s interests (Adami, 2009)
rather than Cooperation and shared understanding (unlike
defined by Grice 1965, 1975; Hall 1980; Sperber and Wilson 1986)
The contemporary media landscape: changes in communication
Many devices – One shared social affordance: Individualized participation in networks/chains of
semiosis according to the participant’s interests (Adami, 2009)