Yeah, I’m looking at you Moustache Man. ‘Literacy’ sucks. Not the concept, mind you. I mean the word ‘literacy’. We have digital literacy, visual literacy, transliteracy, critical literacy, information literacy, scientific literacy, health literacy, computer literacy, digital literacy, media literacy….the list goes on and on. Of course, nobody colors within the lines, so there’s a lot of confusion out there. This sucks. Well, today I started writing a post trying to organize these various literacies, but after almost 4,000 words, I said, “WTF? Anglo-Saxon etymology? Metonymy? Walter Ong? This is going to bore the hell out of everyone.” So, I figure I’ll just throw the “brief” version of my taxonomy out there and see what sticks…
A Taxonomy of Literacies
What do we do with all these literacies everybody is arguing about these days? After thinking it over for a few hours, here’s what I came up with:
“A Taxonomy of Literacies” CC 2.0 BY-NC-SA Click here for original. |
Allow me to explain…
Two senses of ‘literacy’: media specific and media neutral
For all of the variants out there, it’s actually pretty easy to identify two separate ways of thinking about literacy. On the one hand we have the literacies that have to do with particular media. These are the literacies in the literal sense. On the other hand, we have the literacies that are media neutral. These are the literacies that use ‘literacy’ in the more figurative sense. So, this is the first division: media-specific literacy and media-neutral literacy.
Media-specific literacies are those that have to do with particular communication media. We usually think of reading and writing in this category, but when we step back, we realize that reading and writing describe just one possible way of communicating: i.e., print media. This isn’t anything new, if you read Orality and Literacy in library school (or any number of similar works), you’re already familiar with the concept of reading and writing as the technology of the written or printed word. But, other media are out there. Orality is actually a communication medium with specific skills required for mastery (everything from pronunciation to dialectic). Visual literacy is a relatively new term, but the ability to communicate and interpret meaning in images dates back at least to Lascaux. Computer literacy refers to the skills needed to use computing technology (word processing, saving, typing, using a mouse, etc.). I just made up web literacy, but it might be the skills specific to navigating the internet (URLs, email, downloads, etc.). I know of others out there, so the list isn’t meant to be complete. The important thing is that each of these is treated as a separate medium for communication, and these literacies can be grouped accordingly. However, I acknowledge that there is a significant overlap in communicative media. For example, it’s hard to surf the web if you can’t read. I’ll address the overlap further down the post.
Media-neutral literacies are those literacies that encompass skills or concepts that are independent of any particular communication method. Information literacy is neutral with respect to print, video, orality, etc.. The same holds true for health literacy, scientific literacy, critical literacy, and the rest. When we focus on information literacy or scientific literacy, we aren’t concerned with instruction in grammar or spelling. Likewise, when we focus on the reading and writing of print literacy, we aren’t concerned with evaluating information sources or understanding the scientific method. These media-neutral literacies really are neutral with respect to the particular technology medium we use to communicate information.
Domains of media neutral information
Yet another division is appropriate: domain-specific and domain-neutral literacies. Put another way, some of the common literacies are tied to particular subjects or domains: science, health, economics, social networks, etc.. Other common literacies are more conceptual: critical literacy and media literacy are good examples. Uniting them all is the general, media-neutral, information literacy.
Information literacy is just literacy independent of specific media. Evaluation, access, and related IL concepts exist independently of any one medium…they apply to any medium. But, information literacy is a multi-faceted thing. It can apply to narrow subject areas or to general, evaluative tactics.
Domain-specific literacies are those subject-specific literacies that fall under the umbrella of information literacy. For example, health literacy “is not simply the ability to read. It requires a complex group of reading, listening, analytical, and decision-making skills, and the ability to apply these skills to health situations” (nnlm.gov). Examples provided include “the ability to understand instructions on prescription drug bottles, appointment slips, medical education brochures, doctor’s directions and consent forms.” Obviously, these skills are specific to health and medicine…you aren’t going to cover them in a general information literacy course, neither would you cover them in a specific scientific literacy program. Speaking of which, scientific literacy covers the scientific method, empirical observation, experimentation and other concepts that are, again, not media specific. As before, the list in my chart is not meant to be exclusive. Economic literacy, agricultural literacy, statistical literacy…the possibilities for subject-specific literacies are boundless.
Domain-neutral literacies are more conceptual and are not tied to specific subject areas. These literacies are tied to more robust, though narrow, evaluative concepts than are encountered in general information literacy. For example, critical literacy is a particular approach to information literacy based in Marxist theory. It emphasizes evaluative criteria such as social justice, inequality, and the search for hidden subtext (1). Applicable to all subject domains, it is separate from the scientific, health, and related literacies. The same holds true for media literacy, and its focus on propaganda, censorship, journalistic bias, and other evaluative competencies for understanding media (typically the newspaper/radio/TV/website sense of media, not the general sense I used earlier). The subject domain is irrelevant, these types of literacy trade in evaluative methods.
Transliteracy
You knew it was coming: transliteracy. The buzzword of the day.The enfant terrible of the library blogosphere. Well, it’s not so bad. In fact, looking at literacy through the lens of this current taxonomy, I think I’ve found a way to make transliteracy less controversial and more palatable…
For one thing, I take back my previous remarks to the effect that transliteracy is just “a particular approach within information literacy.” I’ll also retract the whole “spheres of information literacy” approach. I think I was mistaken in how I understood information literacy, but not, mind you, in how I understand transliteracy. I still believe that transliteracy deals with transferable skills, analogical reasoning, and whatnot. If anything, transliteracy is our way of addressing the increasing overlap between medium specific literacies. Orality, print, images, social networks…the skills needed to move between these media show an incredible amount of overlap and cross-pollination. I think that’s how we can best make sense of transliteracy. It has nothing to do with information literacy and related, medium-neutral literacies. I think that most of the work coming out of the various transliteracy interest groups is consistent with this medium-specific approach (though there are regrettable exceptions).
Summing up
In sum, there are multiple literacies out there, but they can be organized in a way that makes sense. In fact, I think they should be organized better. I’ll admit that the organizational structure I tossed up there is a work in progress and may be completely, utterly idiotic. But, it’s a start. Feel free to criticize, compliment, or call me a moron, but at least let me know what you think. I’m always open to suggestions for improvement.
(1) For the record, I want nothing to do with “critical literacy”.
I haven't been keeping up with all the trends, so thanks for this step in the right direction, but I will say that the graphic had a lot going for it, but muddies the waters for me.The left side "transliteracy" is highlighted in green, as if it is the most important, but it is the least clear for me. I'm having trouble bringing it into concrete terms. Where does "the ability to tell someone is lying" fit on this chart? I think that the "transliteracy" site would have the non-verbal cues in face-to-face speech (looking away from the person), and the "subject specific knowledges" would have the technical (this argument doesn't fit with what I already know about the subject).Where does "critical thinking" fall into the literacies, or is it beyond it?
Steve, I hadn't realized that the green transliteracy box would make it stand out as the most important. It isn't. I'll try to rework the chart to avoid that confusion.As to the ability to tell if someone is lying, that is a separate issue that I haven't yet seen in all the discussions on literacy. However, there are some great treatments of lying in some of the literature on speech acts.And critical thinking is a skill that transcends all of this literacy talk. I've always approached critical thinking as a means of evaluating statements and arguments, and though information literacy requires critical thinking, the concepts are separate. Really, I just wanted to take all of the "literacies" that librarians are talking about and figure out if there were any patterns, hence my taxonomy. As to the individual merits of these literacies, lets just say that I plead the Fifth.
I would categorize the ability to tell if someone is lying as information literacy. If you consider the three main abilities of an info literate person to be "finds, evaluates, and uses information", the ability to find a lie would be part of evaluating information.
Tell Moustache Man I apologize for interrupting him.
Lane I think transliteracy would be across all of them not just the medium specific ones. Transliteracy isn't about medium but about moving across all literacy as needed.
Bobbi: I had considered that possibility, but I decided against it after looking at how transliteracy is being discussed. Liu, Thomas, and most of the transliteracy blogposts out there are focused on literacy skills from an operational, rather than evaluative, standpoint (Brian's blueberry smoothie video gave me this idea). That is, transliteracy is related to literacy in the literal sense. Because IL isn't specific to any one communication medium, information literacy is only literacy in the figurative sense. I think IL focuses on evaluating information, whereas transliteracy focuses on the actual modes of communicating information. Because of this difference, I couldn't figure out how we could "move across" the operational/evaluative divide without making a category mistake. I think the upshot is that breaking it down this way shows that IL is still important, but that IL is not enough to cover how we actually use information. IL is mute on the foundations of teaching people how to read and write across wildly divergent media, so transliteracy fits a clear and distinct need: 21st century learners need to be transliterate AND information literate.
It's less about the title than it is about the specific learning outcomes — we only get bogged down with the category — start looking at the outcomes and you will find the overlap — and the way to structure the real conversation about learning..
Anonymous: I'm afraid I don't catch your drift. What learning outcomes and categories are you talking about?
According to Thomas and others transliteracy is about things like cultural context which is not medium specific. It would include the things you have listed under domain specific and domain-neutral.
Bobbi, this is one of the areas where Thomas is unfortunately inconsistent. At times she does talk about cultural practices and the convergence of media and digital literacies. But, other times she writes about literacy as an act of communication tied to an interplay between old and new media. The problem is that she equivocates between two distinct meanings of transliteracy: a figurative, normative sense and a descriptive sense. The former allows her to talk about cultural practice and evaluative methods (how we ought to communicate), the latter allows her to talk about new communications technologies (how we do communicate). Seen from a distance, the inconsistency is pretty clear: Thomas runs roughshod over the fact-value distinction.I had originally considered calling the two sides of my chart descriptive and normative, but I figured that was getting too technical. In any event, right now I'm only comfortable relating transliteracy to the medium-specific sense of literacy, though I'm eager to see what happens as more research comes out on the subject.
Have you seen Dana Longley's graphic?http://www.flickr.com/photos/danahlongley/4472897115/Do you think your different visualisations might merge well?While she doesn't include domain specific literacies (which I think is an important distinction) I do like the way she separates the strands of research skills / ethics / and critical thinking.
I have seen Dana's graphic, and I think we're both thinking along the same lines. I'd be curious to see what she does with traditional print literacy.
My continuing question is the relationship between the words "literacy" and "comfort," I think to be literate in something is primarily to be comfortable with it, and thus there is really no process in the world that can be excluded from the umbrella of information literacy. Examples that might seem weird in a librarian's blog post but are maybe still relevant to information literacy are: the child who beginning the conversion from being given a bath to taking a shower– when do we say this child is "shower literate?" (potty training is obviously another example in this category). Or… more abstractly, there's the process of growing up, when is someone adulthood literate? (The government of these United States says age 18). Or, knitting literate, cake decorating literate, marathon running literate, poetry literate, and yes, health information systems literate, film literate, web literate, etc. What I wonder is, since every process in the world seems to involve information, if you can become literate in anything that is a process. Dish washing literate, fashion literate, blogging literate. Anything. Literacy = comfort using information in a process? If that is the case, then an infographic would be a lot more straightforward, probably one line with several bubbles outlining the steps to becoming literate in a process (if such a template could exist). Anyway, some thoughts.
JTP: Thanks for the thoughts, though I think you may be too eager to use the term 'literacy' and I respectfully disagree that every process in the world can be included under the umbrella of information literacy. We have to be careful against taking a concept like information literacy and applying it with such expansive reach that it becomes incoherent.As to the comfort angle, you may want to pick a different term, because I don't think comfort "using information in a process" comports with our everyday sense of literacy. Consider: a two-year-old can be comfortable using a keyboard and mouse to play a simple computer game, though I doubt you'd call a two-year-old "computer literate". We can be comfortable using a tool, yet have no idea what we're doing with it; literacy typically implies having reached a certain threshold skill-level.Finally, we should be careful not to equivocate when we discuss the relationship between literacy and information. Every process may involve information (it's an open question in information theory), but not every process involves semantic information. Information literacy refers to semantic information, not information in general. Anyway, thanks for the thoughts!
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