Literacy

Literacy is one word. It has broad applications and depending on the circumstances can be used in describing almost every aspect of communication. Therefore, to have any concrete meaning, literacy must be situated. Alone, Literacy is vague and can be functionally inserted into statements that may not necessarily relate. For example, if reading sign language is a literacy competency, then certainly face-to-face verbal communication must also be a type of literacy. However, when educators speak about raising literacy achievement, they are most likely referring to a student’s quantitative writing proficiency.

To me, literacy alone simply indicates a transfer of information where one of the agents is organically alive. Why so broad? If a chimp can type out coherent messages using an iconographic keyboard, this is certainly an exhibition of literacy. Therefore when packaging the single word 'literacy', saying that one agent has to be human is already too limiting. Currently, communication between two machines occurs as part of a mathematical function and would not fit under the wide definition of literacy. However, as technology continues to fuse with organic life, the definition of literacy will become even more vague. I guess the most specific statement I can make is that for an interaction to qualify as literacy, there has to be some attempt at information transfer. If I posted this piece of writing on a Chinese blog, having no idea what the blog is about and where none of the others users could make meaning of my words, it would still be an attempt at literacy, even though there was no actual transfer of information.