Page 95 - Literacy in the New Media Age

84 LITERACY IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE

Whether that text was recorded or not is not the issue. If it has been recorded we
can go back over it and reflect in various ways on aspects of the text – we can do
text-analysis. But even if there is no record of that action, there will nevertheless
have been a text, though as with most social action, the traces of it are likely to
be slight and difficult to recover. When the action has taken place predominantly
via graphic modes – rather than as speech or as bodily action – we have a
tangible trace, a ‘written text’, or a text using a number of modes, a ‘multimodal
text’. This text is more immediately amenable to reflection and analysis, a fact
which has led many commentators to speculate that writing is crucial to the
development of certain forms of intellection. Of course, even when there is such
a graphic trace, the actions which produced it will have been accompanied by
other actions, and will have taken place in specific environments, many of which
will have shaped, without leaving directly recoverable traces, the text.
The significant point is that social actions shape the text that is a result of such
actions. If the actions are relatively stable and persistent, then the textual forms
will become relatively stable and persistent. At that point generic shape becomes
apparent; we can see more or less instantly what genre is invoked, what generic
occasion we are involved in. At that point, too, convention becomes significant,
in that it becomes essential to take account of what conventions are at work in
that domain of practice; if I am not aware, I will commit errors which will be
noticed by those who are in the community that observes that convention. There
will be penalties for not observing, or not being able to observe, the conventions.
This is the point at which there is a pedagogic interest. In as far as the school
sees it as its task to provide young people with the resources to act in their
societies with maximal potential for autonomous action, the young will need to
understand the constraints and limitations as well as the potentials and
possibilities for action. A full knowledge of genre conventions – by which I
mean knowledge of the socially generative conditions and their realisation – is
one part of such knowledge in the domain of written representation.
Social practices take place in fields of power, and so the genres which are
characteristic of a social group are not just expressions of such power, they are
also arranged in hierarchies of power. To be aware of the genres, their
constitutive principles, their valuations in hierarchies of power, and above all to
be able to produce them, in variations which are fully adequate to the writer’s
interests at the moment of writing, becomes both the sine qua non of fully literate
practice and the condition for full participation in social life. It is then
inescapable that genre-knowledge – among others, of course – needs to form part
of the curriculum of literate practice. For me this is beyond question. The really
important questions arise at a different point: are genres to be taught as ideal and
stable forms? Are the genres which are most powerful in a society to be taught in
preference to others? Are the genres of marginal groups – whatever the reasons
for their marginality – also to be included in the curriculum? In part I have
already indicated my answer. For me the focus will need to be on the social
principles that generate the textual forms. If we place the emphasis there, then