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Nancy Roche
Writing 1010-013
October 23,2014
Literacy as a Social Practice
"Our interest is in social practices in which literacy has a role, hence the basic unit of a
social theory of literacy is that of literacy practices." (Barton & Hamilton 7) David Barton and
Mary Hamilton seems to center around literacy being seen as more than simply reading
or writing, but as a social thing. They speak on how literacy uses similar practices within a
domain to strengthen social structures and practices as well as discussing literacy events
and practices in detail, leading us to believe these are key components in the essay. This
essay illustrates the views on literacy from Barton and Hamilton on how literacy can help
shape social structures and practice. Literacy in various practices means various different
things.
Literacy, in a social context, can be something that is exclusive to it's own domain. A good
example of this is how Barton and Hamilton illustrate how "practices which involve different
media or symbolic systems, such as a film or computer, can be regarded as different literacies, as
in film literacy and computer literacy." (Barton/Hamilton 10) The authors want to make it very
clear that literacy changes with context. Barton and Hamilton say "literacies are coherent
configurations of literacy practices." (Barton/Hamilton 11) Where there's a grey area is the
flexibility of a structured context, or a domain. As you can imagine there are many overlaps
within this theory. Everything and anything could potentially be in millions of domains
on it's own.