Literacy

Like other social practices, literacies are situated, multiple, ideological, and historically inflected. Over the past few decades, literacy studies scholarship has shown the value of a systematic examination of literacy practices and become a field of inquiry that intersects with many of the priorities of applied linguistics. Increasingly, literacy studies scholars and applied linguists are paying more attention to the social, cultural, ideological, and material dimensions of both language and literacy – and how they each influence learning and other social practices. This chapter explores the place of literacy studies scholarship in the field of applied linguistics and argues that increased attention to literacy is compatible with the aims of applied linguistics. It also considers and demonstrates some of the broader implications of a literacy-as-social-practice approach to inquiry. After providing a brief overview of the history of literacy studies, I describe key advances in the recent study of literacy and literacies, discuss current issues and debates, and outline potential future directions for research. The chapter illuminates the socially situated, historically influenced, and ideologically inflected ways that language, literacy, learning, and society are bound together and influence each other. Areas covered include literacy as a social practice, critical literacy, multilingual literacies, multimodal literacies, digital literacies, and rhetorical literacies.