Literacy and Practices

Literacy theory, a multi-disciplinary, late-twentieth century endeavor, examines the acts of reading and writing as cognitive and social processes, seeking to define the relationship between reading and writing and other social and cognitive—especially linguistic—acts. As such, literacy theory intersects with discussions of public and individual education and reading habits that surface with the rise of the mass reading public. Early twentieth-century Britain is an important historical site for intellectual consideration of literacy because near-universal access to education across social classes influences an increase in middle and working class readers.

Apart from adopting the term “literacy” to describe basic functional knowledge of and ability to navigate processes of information, as in “academic literacy” and “technological literacy,” composition theorists work with orality-literacy theory in order to explain and confront various situations in the teaching of composition. “The Celestial Omnibus” thus supports theories that “levels” of literacy exist within the same society” (Heath, 1982, 9). . From at least the 1980s, theorizing literacy has been considered an essential part of theorizing the teaching of composition, which deals explicitly with literate activity. The exception is Early Modern Studies, in which the question of the book and who reads or produces it is central to many scholars' work. Although literature and literacy are intimately connected, with literature depending on the fact of literacy in order for the potential of literary texts to be realized, there has long been a disconnect in consideration of these two concepts.

While literary representations of literacy hint at an anxiety about this interdependent relationship, literacy theory presupposes the presence (though not necessarily the accessibility) of literature—taken in the broadest sense of “things written.” Literary theory addresses the relationship between readers and texts in various ways. Some currents of theory address ways in which texts represent individuals as socio-political entities, ...