Reading Response- Chapter 2
For this week’s reading of Lankshear & Knobel I found myself intrigued, confused, and inspired because a commercial that is oddly enough for whisky. During my reading, I kept thinking back at chapter one and the history behind literacy and what did literacy mean. However, in chapter 2 the literature defines “literacy” as “not some singular phenomenon but, rather, to understand literacies as multiple”. This idea of understanding literacies as multiple began my interest to understand how many others commonly viewed literacy. In the beginning of my journey, I started with YouTube and I wanted to find videos that were connected to the word “literacy”. In my search, I commonly found that the word literacy was often connected to some form of reading and writing. This is where I stumbled upon New Bell’s South Africa TV Ad- The Reader, now at first I was a bit hesitant about showing this video to you all but after some thought this was actually a very good video to demonstrate my discussion. Now I do not necessarily agree that literacy is tied with just reading and writing, however what I find interesting is the social practice and meaning behind literacy and being literate. In our text, there is a statement that says “How does life get to be “structured” and “arranged” in ways – for better or for worse – that we can get socialized into, such that we can go about doing and being in ways that make some kind of sense” this statement made me think of how individuals live their daily lives especially with meaning. In this commercial, it has a man who is learning how to read and write. What went through my mind as I was watching this was not how he learned how to read and write but the fact knowing how to read and write enhanced his life tremendously and made him happy, he was not only able to understand others but others were able to understand him. The importance of literacy is behind encoded text where the importance of communication is not necessarily behind communicating but the meaning behind the communication. Literacy affects our daily lives and can be found in a variety of ways. I was thinking to myself, how literacy is changing and how many feel less than because they do not feel literate in certain areas. For example, imagine being the smartest student in your high school class one day and then coming to college and feeling like you are inadequate because you have no idea what everyone else is talking about. I take many immigrant families for example, they may be some of the most literate individuals where they come from, however when coming to a different country they may be classified as illiterate and how does that feel? To not be able to understand one another and to lack the ability to create meaning in your communication, I am still struggling to understand what is literacy but I do understand to be literate means to at least enhances our lives towards some kind of meaning.
Please enjoy the video below! :)
