A summary from Chapter 2, Barton's Book. Barton, David. (1994). Literacy – An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language. Blackwell Publisher: Massachusetts.

1. Chapter 2
Talking about Literacy
David Barton
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2. 1.
Metaphors for
Literacy

3. “
“Like a germ that learns to enjoy penicillin, illiteracy consumes all the armies
sent to fight it. No matter what we do about it - and we do a good deal,
contrary to complaints from the literacy lobby - the condition persists.
Depending on how you count them, adult illiterates make up anywhere from a
tenth to a fifth of the Canadian population. We have no reason to think their
number is shrinking, and some reason to fear that is growing ... social evil ...
illiteracy is caused ...... The remedy .......”
Financial Times of Canada on July 4, 1988

4. “
“The inner riots in Britain in 1991 were due to 'a matrix of illiteracy and
delinquency and other wrongdoing’.‘”
Archbishop of Canterbury
“Not a high-level literacy, so people were excitable and likely to be led astray.”
4

5. Real life
examples
In Canada, illiteracy
is often linked with
criminality.
In the United States,
the illiterate is a
drain on the
economy.
In Britain, an
illiterate individual
cannot get a job and
is held back. Same
with Canada, the
links with criminality
have also been made
in Britain.
5

6. Paulo Freire presents
traditional literacy
educationas banking,
where knowledge is
deposited in a person.
He contrasts this
traditional view with
those of literacyas
empowerment, as a
right, as something
people do, a process
rather than a thing.
To be literate is to
have access to the
world of books and
other written material.
The trouble with
metaphors for literacy,
such as that of a
disease or a set of
skills, is that they are
limited in scope and do
not capture the
breadth of what is
involved in reading
and writing.
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7. 2.
Theories and
Metaphors

8. 8
THEORIES and METAPHORS
The ideas of literacy include notions of reading, writing, skill, and illiteracy.
As a part of living, we make sense of our lives; we can talk about what we
do; explain and justify the actors, feelings and intentions.
That is why theories are constructed to make sense of the world.
The theories affect our actions, just like emotions and intentions.
Everyone has a view of literacy, and in some way, makes sense of it.

9. Types of
Theories
Professional Theories
 They consist of theories from:
 the specialist,
 the professionals, and
 the researchers.
 Characteristics:
 more articulated and explicit,
 more general,
 can be checked in more
systematic ways,
 formalized into knowledge,
 often passed on by teaching.
9
Everyday Theories
 They consist of theories
everyday people who has his own
view of literacy.
 Characteristics:
 common among people,
 considered as skills, such as
the way parents talk to their
children,
 often seen as reading in
general.

10. 10
Professional and Everyday Theories Relationship
Those theories influence each other. Professional theories are
incomplete and expressed partly in ordinary language. Inevitably,
everyday usage fills the gaps left in these theories.
The teacher of literacy at any level is partly guided by professional
theories taught in training course, but teaching is guided equally by
everyday knowledge which fills out and complete the partial
professional theories.

11. Professional
Theories by
Experts –
Theories of
Literacy
Teaching and
Learning - 1
Cognitive Constructive
Students have already knowledge and what they read will
interact with their prior knowledge.
Literacy is a cognitive process that involves constructing
knowledge, rather than just receiving it.
There are theories in cognitive constructive:
1. Schema Theory
2. Psycholinguistic Theory
3. Construction-Integration Model
4. Transactional/Reader Response Theory
11

12. Professional
Theories by
Experts –
Theories of
Literacy
Teaching and
Learning - 2
Social Constructivist
Literacy is a social activity and is historically and culturally-
based. Literacy is socially mediated. It occurs in interactions
with peers and more knowledgeable others. Learning to read
and write is a process of apprenticeship in which students
engage and learn along side others in real literacy activity.
These theories engage with social and cultural backgrounds,
and identity.
Theories in social constructivist:
1. Sociocultural and Historical Theory
2. Sociolinguistic Theory
3. Emergent Literacy Theory
12

13. Professional
Theories by
Experts –
Theories of
Literacy
Teaching and
Learning - 3
Social Constructionist
This model is formed by critical social science and
poststructuralism. They emphasize not only how knowledge is
produced but also how some sets of knowledge (ways of
viewing the world, interpretion of texts) become dominant or
deemed more coherent or valued than others.
These theories not ony meaning with construction but also
deconstruction, which mean unpacking the ideologies and
perspectives.
Theories in social constructionist:
1. Critical Literacy Theory
2. New Literacy Studies
3. Multiliteracies/ New Literacies
4. Critical Sociocultural Theory
5. Critical Race Theory
13

14. Professional
Theories by
Experts –
Theories of
Literacy
Teaching and
Learning - 4
Correspondence Theories
These theories presume a direct correspondence, or match,
between how the people understand/learn the world around
them and objective reality (what people perceive). The idea of
these theories is based on sense data or what observers can see,
touch and so forth.
Successful reading occurs when an individul’s representation of
the text (such as their response to literal comprehension
question) corresponds to the actual text. While successful writing
occurs when a student’s spelling is correct according to an
assume universal assumption about what is right or wrong.
Theories in correspondence:
1. Behaviorism
2. Information Processing Models
3. Stage Theories
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15. 15
Metaphors and Thinking
Most of language relies on metaphor, because metaphor is used to talk
about things which are not concrete; and for the mind, metaphors are
structured from the physical world too.
Metaphors relate to literacy with such ideas as that of putting thoughts
into writing.
Looking more broadly, concepts like intelligence, evolution, society, and
the individuals are also within frameworks although there might be more
difficult to ascertain.

16. “
What is metaphor?
16
Metaphors are types of figurative language. Figurative language uses figures of
speech to make written and verbal communication more effective, easier to
understand and more striking.
Metaphors are words or phrases that compare two things. They state one thing
“is” another thing.
Metaphors are used in literature, movies, plays, and daily speech.
For examples:
◦ Life is a stage.
◦ Time is stealing.

17. “
Why metaphor?
17
Metaphors help us to visualize thing in a much more vibrant way.
How boring the life is if we use the actual term to say,
“It’s difficult to have a relationship with him because I have to argue him all day long.”
But, what if we say,
“My relationship is a battlefield.”
See the difference and feeling?

18. 3
Definitions of
Literacy

19. 19
Four Words to Consider with
Literacy
LITERATE
LITERACY
ILLITERATE
ILLITERACY

20. LITERATE
• The full-length
Oxford English
Dictionary (1432)
• “capability to read
and write”
ILLITERATE
• Samuel Johnson’s first
dictionary (1755)
• Barclay’s dictionary (1820)
• “not knowing how to read or
write; a document or letter
which is badly written”
20

21. LITERACY
• COBUILD English
Language Dictionary
or Concise Oxford
(1924
ILLITERACY
• Walker’s Critical
Pronouncing Dictionary
(1839)
• “A fact of being unable to
read or write; the fact of
knowing very little about
a specific area”
21

22. 22
Definitions of Literacy (dictionary)
• Reading and writing
• The quality of being literate
• Being able to read and write
• Competence or knowledge in a specific area

23. 23
Definitions of Literacy
• Bailey (2004): Literacy is a set of actions and transitions in which
people use reading and writing for personal and social purposes.
• Mullis et al (2006): Literacy is the ability to understand and use
the written language forms required by society and valued by the
individual.
• Alberta education defines literacy as the ability, confidence and
willingness to engage with language to acquire, construct and
communicate meaning in all aspects of daily living. (retrieved
from https://education.alberta.ca/literacy-and-
numeracy/literacy/everyone/what-is-literacy/)

24. 4.
Literacy Studies

25. Literacy Studies
A growth of study in the area that we can justly refer to the
area of literacy. According to Gee (1989) , “a new field of study,
integrating “psycho” and “socio” approaches to language from
a variety of disciplines…the focus of literacy studies or applied
linguistics should not be language, or literacy, but social
practices ” (p. 525)
The history of the term can be seen from some prior books
claims to the area. The first word of literacy was used in the
early 1980, Language and Literacy: the Sociolinguistics of
Reading and Writing by Stubbs. It was followed by Scribner
and Cole in 1981, The Psychology of Literacy, and so on.
Other words also be linked with literacy, such as orality,
empowerment, politics, discourse, and ecology.
However, the focus of Barton, here, is in print literacy.
25

26. A key to new views of literacy is situating, reading, and writing in its social context.
Here, Barton will draw attention to some experts, whose known and have been
extremely influential. They represent the beginning of the new literacy studies.
26
Scribner and Cole
(The Psychology of Literacy)
Brian Street Shirley B Heath
(Ways with Words, 1983)
Worked with traditions of cross
cultural-psychology
Begin from descriptive social and
anthropological methodologies). He
studied Islamic villagers in Iran
She developed close ties with three
Appalachian communities in the US
& carried out a fascinating study of the
uses of literacy among the Vai of north-
west Liberia
Anthropologist and ethnographic
fieldwork
Used ethnographic and sociolinguistics
methods
They are edging on practice account of
literacy, arguing that literacy only can
be understood from social practices
(movement from psychological
thinking to other)
Describes his approach as an
ideological approach contrasts with
autonomous approach, which claim
literacy can be defined separately from
social context
Actual of Literacy events
Focus on examining home literacy and
school literacy
They conclude: Literacy is not simply
knowing how to read and write a
particular script but applying this
knowledge for specific purposes in a
specific contexts of use.
The meaning of literacy depends on the
social institutions in which it is
embedded …
The concept of literacy covers a
multiplicity of meanings, and
definitions of literacy carry implicit but
generally unrecognized views of its
function and its uses.

27. Another Academic
Researcher
27
Barton have dealt with Brazilian educator Paulo Freire.
He has been very influential throughout the area of adult literacy.
One of his well known metaphor, is that of education as banking.
He makes explicit the fact that in practical terms, literacy teaching
takes place within a social context.
Literacy teaching begins with a critical examination of society and of
the participants’ relationship to it.
Freire is very aware that literacy can be used for different purposes,
that it can have domesticating effects and that it can have empowering
or liberating effects.
Freire’s is an explicitly critical view of literacy.
In further sense, critical literacy links up with critical theory, which
emphasize how social structure affects individuals, and describe the
inequalities in access, and power which constrain what people can do
in their lives.

28. Literacy studies has the potentials to have
an influence at all three of these levels:
-relating to theories of inequality
-searching for practical ways of empowering people
-giving them right to the possibilities of literacy
Mary Talbot, “Looking at language critically is a
way of denaturalizing it-questioning and making
strange conventions which usually seem perfectly
natural to people who use them. It can help
empower them in the sense of giving them greater
conscious control over aspects of their lives,
especially how language shapes them.

29. “
Looking for Metaphor
Barton uses social approach study to covers literacy in many topics. Literacy has a
social meaning, people make sense of literacy lies at the root of their attitudes,
their actions, and their learning.
Social comes from socio. socio-in the term-is not magic word which means good, or
easy, or politically acceptable. One problem with social approaches is that they
usually treat important psychological concepts, like thinking, learning and memory
as basic, unquestionable, and unanalyseable concepts- in Jean Lave’s terms (1988:
18)
In addition, social approaches do not necessarily have a historical perspective and
they may not be dynamic in the sense of viewing people as active decision makers.
One metaphor which can be useful in drawing together the social and the
psychological is metaphor of ecology.
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30. 30
The Ecological Metaphor
*It is concerned with how the activity-literacy- is part of the environment and at the
same time influences and is influenced by the environment.
An ecological approach takes as its starting-point this interaction between
individuals and their environments.
It focuses on how activities are situated in different layers of context. When
applied to human activity more recently, the idea of ecology has often been used
to situate psychological activity, placing it in more compete and dynamic social
context where different aspects interact.
Ecological validity is term of ecology associated with psychological studies.
It also produces a whole set of terms which can provide a framework for
discussions of literacy, such as ecosystem, ecological balance, diversity, etc.
Several ways in which literacy is an ecological issue in the current popular sense
of a political issue to do with the environment.
1. Languages are vanishing at a remarkable rate
2. Dominating languages like English need to maintain their diversity and
variety
3. Often we have not been thought out of communication technology can
change the balance of languages and cultures.

31. 31
References
Barton, David. (1994). Literacy – An Introducton to the Ecology of Written
Language. Blackwell Publisher: Massachusetts.
Overview of Theories of Literacy Learning and Teaching
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy3hBRbG6cM
Metaphors in Writing and Literature
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv-o2WNM6hU
Definition of Literacy Studies:
Gee, J. P. (1989). Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction. Journal of
Education, 171(1), 5–17. https://doi.org/10.1177/002205748917100101

32. 32
Thanks!
Any questions?