Halliday's view of "literacy"

Hi!

A couple of weeks ago as we were commenting Lankshear and Knobel’s as well as Reinhardt and Thorne’s work on digital (L2) literacies development, I mentioned how the definition of literacies as the ability to make meaning valid to a certain community of practice through a variety of codes including but not restricted to verbal and written language was not ‘bought’ by my ‘hero’ Michael Halliday. I meant to share a couple of his quotes on the subject with you and I will in a sec. But basically his idea is that written language, i.e, the way in (or wordings with) which we make meanings in writing, has evolved—like language in general—to serve specific purposes in the ‘social semiotic’ (the dialectically shaped semiotic whole/system made up of language and society). It is not just spoken language written down, it arose to serve specific social functions and then also shaped and was shaped by a specific way of knowing: scientific knowledge as opposed to everyday knowledge. It thus represent or talks about the world in a different way than spoken language does (more statically, as things; as opposed to in movement, as processes). This different representational perspective is inscribed in the wordings used in writing, which are largely different from the wording of spoken discourse. We come to command the written way of meaning through a long and often unconscious process of socialization into the ideal of literacy predominant in our communities. Such command of the written way of making meaning, was unfortunately for too long privileged against the spoken way of meaning making. Despite the welcome current validation of spoken language (regardless of the medium used to convey the meanings it expresses), in no small part due to the rise of internet technologies, command of written language is still an important gatekeeper to arenas of intellectual prestige like academia. Now, despite its clearly distinctive features, not all written discourses are purely written in their form, people rather talk of a spoken/written continuum; however tendencies towards the poles are distinct and real. Research also shows that command of the written language is most often not acquired naturally, unless highly exposed to it. So if we are in anyway committed to education as a vehicle for social equity and the exploration of the potential of the diverse codes we have at hand to mean and how these combine, it will have to be taught and be an object of inquiry. That is why Halliday, as I understand it, argues for the importance of retaining a word to talk about our ability to use written language to mean.

Now the 'master' himself...:

“In many instances the term literacy has come to be dissociated from reading and writing, and written language, altogether, and generalized so as to cover all forms of discourse, spoken as well as written. In this way it comes to refer to effective participation of any kind in social processes. Having argued for much of my working life that we still do not properly value spoken language, or even properly describe it, I naturally sympathize with those who use the term in this way, to the extent that they are by implication raising the status of speaking, of the spoken language, and of the discourse of so-called "oral cultures". The problem is that if we call all these things literacy, then we shall have to find another term for what we called literacy before, because it is still necessary to distinguish reading and writing practices from listening and speaking practices. Neither is superior to the other, but they are different;  and, more importantly, the interaction between them is one of the friction points at which new meanings are created.4 So here I shall use literacy throughout to refer specifically to writing as distinct from speech: to reading and writing practices, and to the forms of language, and ways of meaning, that are typically  associated with them.” Halliday, 2007, pp. 97-98

Note 4: The situation is similar to that which arises with the term language. If we want to extend it to mathematics, music and other semiotic systems, in order to emphasize their similarities of form or function or value in the culture, then we have to find another term for language. The expression natural language arose in response to just this kind of pressure. I am not aware of any comparable term for literacy in its canonical sense.

The entire article goes on explaining the specific features of written language from a linguistic perspective and detailing the distinct contexts were it has developed and the functions it has come to serve. In the name of the paradigm of ‘dispersion, relatedness and sharing’ here’s a digital copy I ‘happen’ to have on his writings on educational linguistics, in case you’re interested...:) 

 (Wait! I still need to work on my new literacIES skills to post it... If I can't pull it please ask me and I'll email it to you)

Halliday, M. A. K. (2007). Literacy and Linguistics: A Functional Perspective (1996) In J. Webster (Ed.), Language and education (pp. 97-132). London; New York, NY: Continuum.