Franco 1

Thomas Franco
Nancy Roche
Writing 1010-013
7 October 2014
Social Literacy
In todays world there are many different facets of life. From the differences of a
human to another human, to their social upbringings, and even to their day to day
practices that make them unique. Each humans literary practices are different. Ones
literary practice may be similar, but they are rarely the same. In this paper the authors
have studied the complexities of literary practices within different domains of life. Barton
and Hamilton have found that there are three attributes; events, practices, and texts that
have to be analyzed in order to understand the differences in literary practices in their
different domains.
Barton and Hamiltons main purpose in writing this essay was to analyze events
to learn about their literary practices and applications. Through historical events they
have learned that social literacies are complex and diverse. The literary practice of an
upper middle class housewifes home-life domain, as presumed the pie baker is, is
ultimately different than the same womans work-place domain. Those two domains
practices may be similar if she is a baker, but they are most definitely different in how
literary practices are applied. Barton and Hamilton believe the differences are within the
use of literary practices.
One cannot look into a literacy practice without looking at the history of said
practice. We need a historical approach for an understanding of the ideology, culture

Franco 2
and traditions on which current practices are based (Barton, Hamilton 13). Studying the
history of hundreds of years of literary practices does not give one a perspective to
justifiably judge and enter literary practices. Through the study of individuals historys
Barton and Hamilton have found that people use literacy to make changes in their lives;
literacy changes people and people find themselves in the contemporary world of
changing literacy practices (14).
With all the changes in the history of peoples literary practices ... there are
different literacies associated with different domains of life (11). People may or may not
be privileged to join a domain that has a different literary practices than its counterpart.
Domains of higher social discourse humans have certain literary practices, as where the
lower social class discourse humans have different literary practices. Both the higher and
lower social class humans are capable of understanding and performing each others
practices, they cannot switch domains because they are not privileged to one anothers,
they belong to theirs and theirs alone. There are also more to literary practices than social
classes. There are different practices between different domains and discourses within
communities. As stated before a housewifes literary practices in her home will most
definitely be different than her practices at her place of work. These are not so much
different literacy practices, as they are different types of literacies (10).
In these different literacies there are texts that are a big part of studying the
literacy practices of their domains. Texts are a crucial part of literacy events but they
do not determine a literary practice rather how they are produced and used (9) help
determine a literary practice. The text is not the goal or end of a literary practice rather
text is a tool used to reach goals set by different literacies within different domains of

Franco 3
life. Barton and Hamilton analyze text because they have observed that texts from
everyday life differ from more formal texts such as educational pieces of literature (9).
Throughout Barton and Hamiltons paper they have explained their views on what
makes up different literary practices and the different domains they belong too. They
recognize that there is a certain way to study and analyze these different literary
practices. These three components, practices, events and texts, provide the first
proposition of a social theory of literacy, that: literacy is best understood as a set of
social practices, these are observable in events which are mediated by written texts (9).
Through the three components mentioned above one can make predictions on how a
literary practice originated, how it has done over the years, and how their goals are
reached.