Talk, Text and Technology

Literacy and Social Practice in a Remote Indigenous Community

By (author) Inge Kral

Publication date:

26 July 2012

Publisher

Multilingual Matters

Dimensions:

210x148mm
6x8"

ISBN-13: 9781847697592

Talk, Text and Technology is an ethnographic exploration of language, learning and literacy in remote Indigenous Australia. This unique work traces the historical transformation of one Indigenous group across four generations. The manner in which each generation adopts, adapts and incorporates new innovations and technologies into social practice and cultural processes is illuminated - from first mission contact and the introduction of literacy in the 1930s to youth media practices today. This book examines social, cultural and linguistic practices and addresses the implications for language and literacy socialisation.

Introduction
PART I LIVING IN THE NOW
Chapter 1 From Forgetting to Remembering
Chapter 2 Transmitting Orality and Literacy as Cultural Practice
PART II NEW FIGURED WORLDS
Chapter 3 Mission Time: Adapting to the New
Chapter 4 Everything was Different Because of the Changing
Chapter 5 The Cultural Production of Literate Identities
PART III PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE
Chapter 6 The Meaning of Things in Time and Space
Chapter 7 You Fellas Grow up in a Different World
Conclusion

Kral claims in her book to try to 'counter sweeping generalisations about youth, social practices, the development of literacy and the cultural and historical production of literate identities in one remote Aboriginal setting'. She does this very well. Her work has implications for how we think about literacy, literate subjects, literacy as social and cultural practice and change. It is a timely book and, in an environment saturated with deficit conceptualisations and simplistic reading of literacy, it is an uplifting and important read.