Literacy as a Social Practice

In his paper, “What is Literacy?” James Paul Gee (1986) provides a complicated definition as to what he believes literacy to be. First he explains the importance of societal networks we have developed to share knowledge which he calls discourses.  Gee goes on to say, “Literacy is control of secondary uses of language (i.e. uses of language in secondary discourses)” (Gee, 1&6).  Secondary discourses or secondary institutions could describe school, the workplace, political party or religious communities. Here we interact with people who necessarily do not share the same amount of interest or knowledge as they are not exposed to similar experiences. Our experiences within these secondary discourses test our literacy we obtained through the primary discourse. This primary discourse is a familial network that could consist of family or close friends who impact our social identity from youth. According to Gee, we cannot become literate without knowledge, and he establishes a distinction of how we obtain knowledge; acquisition and learning. Gee argues, “Acquisition is good for performance; learning is good for meta-level knowledge” (Gee, 5). Acquired knowledge is understood by nearly all, and not conscious, but learned knowledge is explicit and conscious. Learned knowledge is the understanding of understanding; through this deep level of understanding we remain relevant within our own circles of discourse.

Being irrelevant on the internet means you simply do not exist. As is mentioned by Dana Boyd in her article, “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites” with the creation of social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, Friendster etc. we created what Gee would probably see as a tertiary discourse. A web of impersonal networks spun off the formal circles we have associated ourselves in. With this informal and faceless audience we present “ourselves” to spawn an accepted and promoted aspect of what Boyd calls “social voyeurism.”  She elaborates, “Many began participating because of the available social voyeurism and the opportunity to craft a personal representation in an increasingly popular online community” (Boyd, 2007: 4). This image is like a stage performance to present ourselves in a different way that maybe our primary and secondary discourses would not view appropriate, relevant or uncharacteristic of that group. By understanding the social protocols of networking sites we grow and alter our self image to what we wish others to see. This process, performance and adjustment is what Erving Goffman called Impression Management. “Through learning to make sense of others’ responses to our behavior, we can assess how well we have conveyed what we intended. We can then alter our performance accordingly” (Boyd, 2007: 11-12). This assessment into understanding ourselves and other peoples understanding of us we become literate and think about our relationships.

Like many other social networks, videogames also promote system thinking. In Gee’s “Good Video Games and Good Learning” article he tells us, “Games encourage players to think about relationships, not isolated events, facts, and skills” (Gee, 2005: 36). In previous work, Gee expressed that the best way to gain knowledge is to both, acquire and learn as it allows for a greater knowledge into social literacy as some acquired knowledge is essential into the greater meta-level knowledge learning provides us.