The Popular Culture of Conspiracy/the Conspiracy of Popular Culture

Abstract

In this thesis, I explore the ways in which four teenagers read popular print, digital, television and video texts, and how these ways of reading constitute literacy practices. Popular texts are not only significant for teenagers' cultural identities and interests; they also represent potentially valuable connections between informal and formal literacy practices. The implications for subject English of including popular texts are manifold. The study finds that students' uses of popular texts include identity negotiation and formation which manifest themselves as significant literacy practices. I contrast my students' responses with the kinds of contemporary and decontextualised understandings of 'literacy' reflected in official government documents and prevailing classroom practices. As productive reading strategies, the literacies associated with popular texts lay claim to a far stronger place in English classrooms than currently exists: importantly, they provide an interface between out-of-school and in-school literacy practices. 1 conclude that mobilising students' cultural expertise to extend their textual practices would enhance teachers' power to bridge informal and formal literacies. Student access to the discourses of schooling would be facilitated through forging connections between students' uses of popular texts and a broader range of textual understandings. Engagement with popular texts, effectively explored in the classroom, can extend students' communicative competence and enrich the dimensions of literacy practice.