Representations of language learning and literacy, also known as literacy narratives, are a staple of literature. They tell stories of conflict that illuminate the sociocultural dynamics whereby we learn to speak, read, and write. Yes, they tend to be read as stories about the powers of language and literacy the power to make someone human, to form identity, and improve ones social status. This book introduces the literacy narrative approach, a methodology for the study of literacy narratives that accounts for the conflict that pervades them. It achieves this by focussing on how the texts represents the interactions between writing and other semiotic modes (multimodality).
Sitting at the interface between theory and practice, it provides three practical applications of the literacy narrative approach and, in the process, develops a theoretical perspective for thinking about language learning, literacy, and communication as they are practised in the real world.
It offers comprehensive methodology for the study of representations of language learning and literacy and applies it to three important contemporary literary texts. The practical applications shows that this methodology enriches the texts reception and fosters a critical understanding of language learning and literacy as social phenomena.
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Credits
Introduction: Representations of language learning and literacy and the
demise of the powers of verbal language
1. Victors story
2. The long life of the powers of language
3. A paradigm for language-based conflict and the role of literacy
4. The status of representations of language learning and literacy in
literature and literary criticism
5. The rationale of the practical applications and a word about terminology
6. Overview of chapters
Chapter
1. Three approaches to the study of representations of language
learning and literacy
1.1 The language learner approach
1.2 The translation approach
1.3 The literacy narrative approach
Conclusion
Chapter
2. Intersemiotic conflict in Richard Rodriguezs Hunger of memory
2.1 Positioning Rodriguez as a Chicano
2.2 Rodriguezs controversial view of the world: the private versus the
public
2.3 The competing logics of Hunger of memory
2.4 Intersemiotic conflict in Hunger of memory
2.5 Hunger of memory reworded
Conclusion
Chapter3. The letter kills, singing gives life: literacy and multimodality in
Diego Maranis Nuova grammatica finlandese
3.1 Diego Marani and Nuova grammatica finlandese
3.2 The reception of Nuova grammatica finlandese: from tragic story about
language and identity to cannibalistic pulp fiction
3.3 The competing logics of Nuova grammatica finlandese
3.4 Imagined communities: setting the scene for an allegorical novel about
essay-text literacy and nationalism
3.5 The letter kills, singing gives life
Conclusion
Chapter
4. Illiteracy, class, and multimodality in Vincenzo Rabitos Terra
matta
4.1 Literacy, class, the classroom, and literature: a changing correlation?
4.2 The typescript: style, materiality and "rabitese"
4.3 Terra matta and the rewriting by Einaudi
4.4 The reception before and after the publication: an old typewriter and a
primitive peasant locked in a room
4.5 Terra mattas literacy narrative: a resourceful learner familiar with
essay-text literacy and foreign languages
4.6 The typescript as a multimodal literacy narrative
4.7 Conclusion
Conclusion: Strategies for reading literacy narratives and future directions
Index
Elena West recently completed a PhD in Modern Languages and Translation at the University of Bristol. She has taught academic writing in UK universities and Italian and French in Adult Education. She is a member of the British Academys Early Career Researcher Network.
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