Name: Yingcong Liang (Russell)

Instructor: Dr. Amy Stornaiuolo

EDUC-6306

Fall 2022

Understanding Literacy and Power from a Language Perspective

From my perspective, literacy is what people do, think, and make meanings with language for a

purpose within a particular context. According to Barton and Hamilton (2005), literacy is best

understood as a set of social practices; these can be inferred from events that are mediated by

written texts. However, the understanding of written texts is the only medium in which literacy

takes place limits the role of literacy. From my understanding, Literacy occurs in all language-

mediated interactions. The form of language can be spoken, written, or in the mind, and people

just use language in various ways for different needs. It means that literacy is what people do,

think, and make meanings with language. As Bloome and Green (2015) say, literacy is a

discursive and interactional construction, language plays the role as the constitutive of, as well as

constituted by, the social interaction among members of a social group. And in this definition,

language itself assumes the role of a medium instead of written language. Also, Barton and

Hamilton (2005) pointed out the purposeful nature of literacy practices, that the use of language

is to achieve goals, for instance, literacy happens when an individual is taking notes in class in

order to get a better understanding of the knowledge, or to get an A in the final exam. Because of

the purposeful nature of literacy, literacy doesn’t happen with only one participant. The

happening of literacy usually involves interactions with the external world: other objects,

participants, and relationships. These interactions are mediated by language, for instance,

individuals making meanings on an object through language, or participants exchanging ideas

through language. Moreover, in literacy practice, not only do individuals use language to interact

with the external world but also the external world is affecting individuals through language.

Yagelski (2012) noted that individuals and their sense of the world could be shaped when

individuals are making meanings through language. And Murray (1991) interpreted the process

of writing an autobiography as a process of people inventing themselves. The effect on and by

the world unmasks the dynamically interconnected relationship between language and reality

(Freire, 1987). In literacy practices, when we are using language for a purpose, language is also

used by the world to transform us and shape reality.

Language as the medium in literacy practices could be used to serve the reproduction of social

inequality. Normally, while individuals are making meaning of the word, the meaning is made

based on how individuals understand the world around them, and the text people read is always

situated within a wider context (Freire, 1987). And the social-constructionist notes that social

discourses of diverse communities determine people’s variable interpretations of the text

(Canagarajah, 2019). Different groups of people tend to interpret the same text according to their

social discourses and personal experiences. However, in school education, a standard language is

always imposed on students, and language practices from other social and cultural groups are not

included in school education. And according to Bloome (1997), the one with power at a

particular time and place are the one to define what counts as literacy. And inside a classroom,

the teacher is always the one who has power. Students are required to use language properly just

like the teacher does, and the words are laden with the teacher’s existential experience instead of

the students’ experience (Freire, 1987). For instance, Kirkland (2010) notes that in city schools,

English is taught in a way that does not reflect the Englishes city students travel with. However,

Gutiérrez and Rogoff (2003) point out that if an individual is engaging in particular forms of

language and literacy activities, he may apply practices from repertoires of practices that connect

with other activities under different circumstances in which they commonly engage; and students

as bilingual draw from all of their language and social practices as they make meaning and

develop literacies (Ascenzi Moreno, 2020). Therefore, the denial of the students’ language in the

classroom should not be understood as the denial of a language that’s separated from social

discourse. It should be understood as a denial of a certain social or cultural group’s social

practices and experience. And Villegas suggests that the way knowledge and cultural ways being

taught in school could serve to marginalize certain populations: the devaluation of cultural

practices of historically marginalized groups causes the reproduction of social inequality

(Villegas, Yin & Gutiérrez, 2021). But language could not only be used to produce inequality, it

is also a weapon for us to transform reality for its role as a medium. Language connects the

dialectical relation between humans and the world and could be used to reflect and act upon the

world to transform it (Yagelski, 2012). Therefore, denying the monolingual standard language

and understanding language differently across contexts is an important way to disrupt power

dynamics in society and achieve social equity.

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 References

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Bloome, D., & Green, J. (2015). The social and linguistic turns in studying language and literacy.
In The Routledge handbook of literacy studies (pp. 19-34). Routledge.
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