Editor: Viv Edwards (University of Reading, UK)
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Volume: 15 Number: 2 Page: 105–116
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Theorising New Literacies In and Out of School
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Peter Freebody
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This paper begins by revisiting the place of literacy in public discourses, 20 years after Graff's exploration of the 'literacy myths' that dominate much community and research discussion. The paper aims
to illustrate the fundamental inter-connectedness of literacy with social practice and with the moral and political organisation of contemporary cultures, illustrating these points through an examination
of interview materials collected in medical clinics and schools. These illustrations are explored for the ways in which they show literacy to be a focal point for considerations that both draw on and reconstruct
broader dimensions of social practice and cultural organisation such as the discourses of gender and class. The paper concludes by stressing the ongoing need for researchers to question the status of literacy
as a functionally autonomous and explanatory construct, and to approach their study of literacy through an examination of the detailed ways in which members of a culture bring certain attributes of literacy
to life in their conduct and in their accounts of everyday practice.
© Multilingual Matters 2001
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