H Williams

Junior lecturer: Dept of Information Studies

Port Elizabeth Technikon

Hamilton Williams is currently on study leave in Australia. He is studying at Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia. Hamilton is completing his MASTER OF APPLIED SCIENCE: INFORMATION AND LIBRARY STUDIES this year. His thesis is entitled: A GENERIC POST-LITERACY SUPPORT MODEL FOR NEO-LITERATES IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES. He is using the De Aar region of the Department of Education as a case study investigating what support systems are available for neo and semi-literate people. Hamilton’s main interest lies in the mechanisms employed by indigenous illiterate people in townships investigating how they employ innate knowledge to cope in their modern world of letters.

The field of New Literacy Studies:

"New Literacy Studies focus on the ways that people use reading, writing, and oral language in social situations for social purposes" (Luna, Solsken & Kutz, 2000:276). This field of New Literacy Studies acknowledges that the "different cultures and communities have different 'ways with words' (Heath, 1983 in Luna, Solsken & Kotz, 2000), and that even seemingly universal acts such as asking questions and telling stories vary across cultures and situations…" (Luna, Solsken & Kutz, 2000:276). "So, instead of literacy in the singular, scholars have begun to speak of literacy practices, multiple literacies, or situated literacies and to see individuals as having varied repertoires of literacies" (Luna, Solsken & Kutz, 2000).

Conventional definitions of literacy

Harman (1987) states that the attempt to define literacy is like a walk to the horizon: as one walks towards it, it continuously recedes. Malale (1996) states that the different views on literacy indicate that there is no single meaning of literacy. Definitions are altered by circumstances, and new ones replace old definitions. The American Federal National Literacy Act of 1991 (quoted in Amstutz & Sheared, 2000) defines literacy as having an ability to read, write, speak English, compute, and solve problems to achieve and function in a job and in society. This definition refers to competencies a person should have if he/she wants to call him/herself literate.

Nobody gives a clear indication of what illiteracy is. There are what can be referred to as 'situated practices' (Prinsloo,1999) within which researchers categorise themselves. Luna, Kutz & Solsken (2000) talk about literacy as not being "a single body of knowledge, but a set of varied practices" (2000:276). In his book, Pedagogy of the oppressed, Freire (1968) talks about the power of literacy or education that can liberate the oppressed citizens of a country. This trend is followed by almost all of the researchers. They are situating themselves in a ‘room’ within the ‘house’ of literacy.

Researchers concentrate on the object (literacy), rather than the subject (the ‘I’ or person) within which the phenomenon of literacy (or illiteracy) occurs. The person is seen as an object on which literacy or illiteracy has an impact. In fact, it should be the other way around. The person is the subject and literacy (or illiteracy) is the object restricting the person from having effective lingual intercourse with his/her peers. This 'objectification' of the human subject can be seen against a background where people still believe that literacy (or illiteracy) controls the person. The 'abnormality' of the phenomenon of illiteracy in a literate society is concentrated on rather than on the power of the person to eliminate this abnormality.

It shows clearly that the above definitions were formulated from a background where the question of objectivity and subjectivity still plays a central role in the researcher's mind. The traditional definitions of objectivity and subjectivity suggest that objectivity represents all that is good, unbiased, neutral, etc. Subjectivity is seen as being partisan, biased, driven by your own emotions on a subject. Strauss (1998) however argues that a human being is subject to his/her own set of ideas. This means that before one can formulate a concept, one relies on one’s ideas brought about by childhood orientation. For example, an 'objective' account of a motor car accident would be: "The car has hit a pedestrian". People would argue that this is an 'objective' account of what has happened. However, if the narrator did not know what symbol to assign to a metal entity running on four circle-shaped rubber ‘things’, he/she would not be able to assign the symbol 'car' to it. This means that the ability to identify and assign symbols to what we become aware of is entirely dependent on our childhood orientation. This childhood orientation is called our life-and-world view (Fourie, 1998; Strauss, 1998). The life-and-world view we are talking about is what could be referred to as a person's paradigm framework. This brings us to the conclusion that we are entirely subject to our own set of ideas. It means that we can never be neutral (Dooyeweerd, 1975). We can, however, have what is called 'normative subjectivity' being the equivalent of 'objectivity' and ‘anti-normative subjectivity’ being the equivalent of ‘subjectivity’.

The definitions of literacy are also based on a presumably 'agreed' premise where the omission of any descriptor of a kind of literacy is used, the 'stand-alone' word 'literacy' automatically refers to a situation where a person can read or write. So, this means that whenever the word 'literacy' is used on its own, it automatically presupposes a lingual context. For example, if a person is unfamiliar with computer terms and cannot use a computer, the condition is referred to as 'computer illiteracy'. What we are looking at is developing a definition of literacy that will not only identify with the lingual aspect of life, but also be interdisciplinary since all subject fields use the word literacy as an indicator of abilities within the given subject.

A Constructivist account of literacy

The Lingual aspect of life has ‘meaning’ as its nucleus and presupposes a situation of being able to denote and derive meaning in a text. The medium for this denotation and derivation is language. CONTEXTUAL SIGNIFICANCE forms the basis for the process of identification and denotation. This means that unless one is given a context or framework within which you should derive meaning, the exercise will be meaningless.

Alasuutari actually makes mention of the fact that everything we know and everything we believe about the world is based on observations and inferences drawn from those observations (1998:5). Literacy can be seen as the power or ability to assign symbols to entities or phenomena we become aware of. By assigning these symbols we are actually ‘marking’ what we become aware of with ‘labels’ so as to identify the ‘label’ and establish whether there are any similarities to the ‘label’ we have in front of us. The ability to draw conclusions from and act on what we have been informed about is called knowledge. Knowledge is a situation that can prevail only when a person can make a decision based on what he/she has been informed about. If you do not have the bits and pieces (data) organised in a significant manner within a certain context (information), it is impossible to make a decision based on what you have been informed about (knowledge output). Literacy is therefore one's ability to utilise knowledge to solve a particular problem in a particular situation or to make informed decisions based on the information conveyed to you at an earlier stage (expertise) (Fourie, 1992). Note that this definition does not refer to any field or subject, and definitely not to reading or writing.

The term 'illiterate' on its own describes an inability the particular person has, and does not by any means refer to the processes of reading and writing. We therefore have to try to determine what kind of inability it is not to be able to read or write. Reading and writing are lingual in nature and definitions should describe the term taking into account the ability or inability the person has in respect to the lingual aspect of life.

The underlying aspects in literacy are those of identification of what has been denoted and assigning a symbol to what has been identified. In other words, a definition of literacy should really be one that will refer to a person's capability to identify the entity or phenomenon in question against a set of ideas already installed in the person's mind. This set of ideas is developed as the person matures and is heavily influenced by environmental factors such as culture and religion. The complete set of ideas is then referred to as a person's paradigm framework or life-and-world-view (Fourie,1998). This life-and-world-view orientates the person in his/her environment. One can therefore only identify entities or phenomena against this background. When you write, you are using the known conventional codes of a particular language and with that the reader would be able to identify those codes using the same context you used. If the reader can assimilate the text and find matches in his/her set of ideas we say that he/she understands. The context referred to here is definitely the language where the ‘rules’ are set for the process of decoding. The reader first has to understand in which language the text is written and he/she will then be able to decode the message in the same way the encoder would have wished him/her to do so. It is also the responsibility of the writer/encoder to deliberately lead the reader to understand in which language he/she should go about decoding the text. Apart from this, finger small muscle development is of utmost importance if the writer wants to put across the codes in a clear and precise manner.

Literacy would therefore be the ABILITY TO IDENTIFY AND DENOTE WITH CONTEXTUAL SIGNIFICANCE.

Ability refers to a competency in something and to possess the necessary requirements to carry out an act. This ‘ability’ presupposes that the person can use knowledge (gained from ‘processed information’, gained from data presented in a meaningful way, gained from observations and assigning of symbols to what has been observed). ‘An ability to do something’ refers to a competency a person has to process knowledge gained from processed information and make a decision based on what he/she knows (juridical aspect).

Identify refers to the ability to distinguish between phenomena and entities using the law of exclusion (economic aspect). The question of similarities and differences play an important role here. When you identify something, it means that you can ‘locate’ that concept in your set of ideas. This set of ideas is developed through the years and is really one's ‘library’ of the mind. The moment a concept is developed, it is actually the end result of an involved process. There is the ‘I’ (the person) and the ‘idea’ (what the person is thinking about). This implies that the thought process cannot take place without the ‘I’ (the person who is thinking) and the ‘idea’ (which will always be subject to the person's life-and-world-view).

The eyes transmit the visuals to the brain. A cognitive process takes place in the brain where the process of ‘match-finding’ takes place. During ‘match-finding’, what has been observed is compared against a set of ideas already installed in the person's mind. This set of ideas can also be referred to as a ‘human library’. The processes of searching and comparing are made possible by an idea the person has about what he/she has become aware of. As the person observes what he/she is becoming aware of there is constant anticipation (Fourie, 1992) of what the phenomenon is supposed to be. Should this anticipation be proven correct and a match is found, the person is regarded as having understood what he/she has become aware of.

Denote refers to the ability of a person to assign symbols to what he/she has become aware of (Lingual Aspect). The assigning of symbols again depends on the assigner's life-and-world-view or paradigm framework. This means that he/she is limited to what he/she knows about the phenomenon in question. A set of ideas that developed during childhood forms the basis for arguing whether the phenomenon in question is ‘A’ or ‘B’. Distinguishing ‘A’ from ‘B’ presupposes a process of exclusion (Economic Aspect).

Contextual refers to a frame of reference or idea (of reality) in which the input/output could be interpreted (Fourie,1992). It is the ‘block’ or ‘box’ provided to the receiver within which he/she can analyse phenomena, situations or entities.

Significance refers to a human-only activity (capability) of assigning meaning to an event through analysis and form in a meaningful way (Fourie,1992). You can form a concept in your knowledge base or set of ideas and transform your knowledge into information by forming words and sentences.

The above definition clearly indicates that the concept of literacy is not confined to a particular field of study. In fact, the ability to do something is literacy. Now, the question that remains is that in what way is this person literate? For example, if a person can identify issues in computing and can communicate (in computing terms) what he/she has identified (providing a context for the receiver as to how to go about analysing what has been communicated/denoted), we refer to that person as being computer literate. If, for example, a person is able to identify economic terminology and denote/communicate ways of managing your money better, we refer to that person as being economically literate.

So, the ability to be able to identify a set of codes on graphic material and successfully identify the context or framework (language) within which this decoding of codes (letters and digits) should take place and ability to encode providing a framework (writing), is called lingual (meaning) literacy. Note how the words: ability, identify, context and significance can be applied to any subject field and it is not restricted to Linguistics only

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