Victoria Carrington

Txting: The End of Civilization (Again)?.

This paper begins with the authors recent participation in an Australian radio interview on the topic of SMS txting. It takes this as an entry point for an analysis and discussion of the discourses around txting to be found in a series of newspaper articles and taken up in the radio interview. Moving on from the initial analysis, the paper addresses some of the underlying tensions that come into play as new technologies and new literacies are taken up by young people and move with them into classrooms with existing institutional traditions around text and literacy.

The Uncanny, Digital Texts and Literacy

Literacy is one of the binding threads of modern society. Print text and literacy are irretrievably intertwined with many of the core themes of industrial society: family, gender, nation state. In the shift to new digital technologies, changing sociocultural landscapes and new theoretical frames, the growing difficulty in defining and delineating literacy is one of the core discussions of contemporary literacy politics. The familiarity and centrality of print-based literacy and the often-unseen social practices and hierarchies attached to it make text and literacy a strong candidate for Freud’s Das Unheimliche. Consequently, the notion of ‘the uncanny’ speaks to the sudden unfamiliarity of the literacy practices and texts of young people around digital technologies, both in terms of the anxiety caused by the unexpectedly unfamiliar and for the increasing fuzziness of the concepts of text and literacy. This paper therefore borrows the notion of the uncanny from Freud to consider the reading, remixing, production and dissemination of digital text by children of school age. While these practices are familiar social and technical processes for many children, they are uncanny and unsettling for many educators and policy-makers in their roles as representatives of the social institution of school.

Texts and literacies of the Shi Jinrui

In post-industrial societies saturated with the multimodal texts of consumer culture-film, computer games, interactive toys, SMS, email, the internet, television, DVDs-young people are developing literacy skills and knowledge in and for a world significantly changed from that of their parents and educators. Given this context, this paper seeks to demonstrate the necessity of rethinking and extending traditional notions of text and literacy, and consider the social and cultural implications of such a shift.In post‐industrial societies saturated with the multimodal texts of consumer culture—film, computer games, interactive toys, SMS, email, the internet, television, DVDs—young people are developing literacy skills and knowledge in and for a world significantly changed from that of their parents and educators. Given this context, this paper seeks to demonstrate the necessity of rethinking and extending traditional notions of text and literacy, and consider the social and cultural implications of such a shift.

‘I’m in a Bad Mood. Let’s Go Shopping’: Interactive Dolls, Consumer Culture and a ‘Glocalized’ Model of Literacy

This article examines the significance of Diva Starz, a new line of interactive dolls aimed at young girls between 6 and 11 years for current models of literacy. It argues that these dolls have much to tell us about the construction of children as consumers, our views about ‘childhood’, and the models of literacy instruction most appropriate for giving children the skills and knowledge needed to deal with the complex pedagogic texts characteristic of childhood in contemporary consumer culture.

‘I'm Dylan and I'm not going to say my last name': some thoughts on childhood, text and new technologies

Discussions of text and the literate practices of the young have always taken place against larger backdrops painted in particular historical, cultural and ideological patterns. In the contemporary era, the emergence of weblogs (blogs) and their rapid uptake by young people all over the world provides an interesting insight into the tensions that emerge as views of children, technology and textual practice intersect in a particular historical, cultural and ideological moment. This article suggests that the emergence of new technologies and new textual practices poses a significant challenge to traditional views of literacy and childhood. It undertakes a textual analysis of samples of the ways in which blogging and bloggers are represented in the media and contrasts these discourses with the production, dissemination and use of blogs created by two young people. This small slice across blogging serves to highlight the deeply rooted tensions between some models of childhood and some contemporary practices around text, technology and information.

Digital Childhood and Youth: New texts, new literacies

This journal has long engaged with the cultural politics of education, interrogating the intersections between cultural forms and movements and the hegemonic frameworks and institutions of education. In this special edition we focus the interrogatory lens on the production and use of texts in an age of digital communications and changing perceptions of childhood and youth. Literacy and childhood have always been, and remain, contentious issues. They are emblematic concepts rather than objects or facts. As concepts they are elastic and politicized, reflecting tensions and changes taking place in the broader social fabric. In the shift to new digital technologies, changing sociocultural landscapes, and new theoretical frames the growing difficulty in defining and delineating literacy is one of the core discussions of contemporary literacy politics and has become a prominent theme. These discussions encompass demands for an expanded notion of text and literacy (Bearne, 2003; Carrington, 2005; Lankshear, 1997), calls to pull the concept back to its historical and technological roots around print (Kress, 2003), and a concern to differentiate between media and print literacies (Vincent, 2003). While adults as well as young people engage with these new forms of text, it is the literate habitus of children and early adolescents that has caused the most unease and political manoeuvring amongst educators, policy-makers and parents. This special issue takes as its starting point the proposition that any understanding of literacy can no longer be about basic print skills. The New Literacy Studies, the paradigm in which we work, draw from a range of influences*/ethnomethodology, critical pedagogy, poststructuralism, sociolinguistics, and sociocultural psychology to name a few*/all of which foreground the way in which literacy practices are inextricably woven into other social, cultural, economic, political, and institutional practices and contexts. This approach to literacy views it as a practice, distinct from a set of isolated skills, a practice which has meaning only in social contexts or domains. It has often been said that these are new times for literacy, to such an extent that one wonders how old a ‘‘new’’ practice has to be before it becomes accepted as inscribed

Literacy‐lite in BarbieGirls ™

While the attention of researchers has focused on video games, texting and, more recently, the growth of social networking sites such as Bebo.com and Facebook, virtual worlds have emerged as a site of significant cultural and textual relevance for young people. A total of 6.2 million children aged between six and 12 years of age ventured into a virtual world in the 12 months between April 2007 and April 2008. Media and gaming industry analysts predict that by 2011 more than one‐half of all children in that age group will be visiting virtual worlds regularly, going more often and staying longer. Paying attention to the kinds of online and offline practices these worlds promote in relation to identity and text is, for educators, both interesting and important. This article examines one of the most popular current sites for young girls, Mattel’s BarbieGirls™. In particular, the paper will pick up on issues of consumption and gender as a background context to a consideration of the textual practices modeled and made available in this particular virtual world.

Reconceptualizing the possible narratives of adolescence

This paper explores various epistemological paradigms available to understand, interpret, and semiotically depict young people. These paradigms all draw upon a metadiscourse of developmental age and stage (e.g. Hall 1914) and then work from particular epistemological views of the world to cast young people in different lights. Using strategic essentialism (Spivak 1996), this paper offers four descriptions of existing paradigms, including biomedical (Erikson 1980), psychological (e.g. Piaget 1973), critical (e.g. Giroux & MacLaren 1982), and postmodern (e.g. Kenway & Bullen 2001). While some of these paradigms have been more distinct in particular cultural, historical, and political contexts, they have overlapped, informing each other as they continue to inform our understandings of young people. Each paradigm carries unique consequences for the role of the learner, the teacher, and the curriculum. This paper explores contemporary manifestations of these paradigms. From this investigation, a potential new space for conceptualising young people is offered. This new space, underpinned by understandings of subjectivity (Grosz 1994), assumes sense of self to be both pivotal in generative learning and closely linked to the context and its dynamics. We aver that such a view of young people and educational settings is necessary at this time of focused attention to the middle years of schooling. In so doing, we explore the potential of classroom life and pre-service teacher education constructed within this new discourse of young people.

I write, therefore I am: texts in the city

Fuhrer noted that graffiti are announcements of one’s identity, a kind of testimonial to one’s existence in a work of anonymity: ‘I write, therefore I am.’ However, graffiti is often understood to be at best an art form, at worst vandalism. This article is about graffiti, where ‘savage’ writing is inscribed onto the walls of our cities (Lefebvre) and argues that graffiti represents forms of text that directly challenge presumptions of private ownership and corporate power, that draw our attention to the materiality and spatiality of the city, and that act to create what Giddens, Beck et al. and Beck have called narratives of the self. The article suggests that graffiti has much to tell us about the ways in which broader global contexts impact on how we use textual practices to construct narratives about ourselves and our communities in everyday local sites.

Globalization, Family and Nation State: Reframing 'family' in new times

Since the 1970s we have seen and experienced a shift in the processes and directions of capitalism. Regardless of disciplinary or ideological position, this is undeniable. In this paper I examine the implications of globalization for framing ‘family’. I begin by examining the impact of globalization on the contemporary nation state and associated conceptualizations of community. This move is necessary because family has been directly linked to notions of community and, beyond, to nation. I then argue that ‘new times’ require something other than traditional approaches to theorizing community and family, and conclude by proposing a new framing of family as sociospace.