Redefining Literacy as a Social Practice

Abstract

Like so many Writing Program Administrators, I often find my dog-matic quest to subvert problematic representations of literacy disrupted by the reality of my daily work and the fact that such representations far out-number the ones composition scholars might endorse. Similar experiences abound among WPAs in general; however, the distance between perceptions seems all the more significant for those of us directing basic writing pro-grams, writing centers, and similarly marginalized learning spaces. Despite multiple and persuasive arguments against the validity of doing so, many basic writers continue to be identified by standards-based assessments of their reading and writing " skills, " and basic writing classrooms continue to ABSTRACT: Despite multiple and persuasive arguments against the validity of doing so, many basic writers continue to be identified by what Brian V. Street calls the " autonomous model of literacy, " a model that research tells us is as artificial and inappropriate as it is ubiquitous. This article describes a curricular response to the political, material, and ideo-logical constraints placed on basic writing via this autonomous model and instead treats literacy as a social practice. After a brief description of the local conditions from which our program emerged, I articulate what I call a " pedagogy of rhetorical dexterity, " the new model upon which our curriculum is based. Informed by both the New Literacy Studies and activ-ity theory, rhetorical dexterity teaches writers to effectively read, understand, manipulate, and negotiate the cultural and linguistic codes of a new community of practice based on a relatively accurate assessment of another, more familiar one. The final sections of the article describe the assignments included in a recent version of our curriculum, as well as selected student responses to these assignments and readings. Accepting that a curricular solution to the institutionalized oppression implicit in much literacy learning is necessarily partial and temporary, I argue that fostering students' awareness of the ways in which an autonomous model deconstructs itself when applied to real-life literacy contexts empowers them to work against this system.