Language, Culture, and Society

Graduate

The New London Group (1996, 2000), an international group of literacy experts, coined the term “multiliteracies.” In their manifesto, they suggested that literacy needs to focus on ensuring that people of diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds be able to integrate in all societies without losing what is unique to their identities, and for accents and dialects to be recognized as a part of the English language (that there is no one true standard English). It is a matter of equity that we find genuine ways to embrace diversity. The other thrust of the New London Group's theory is that multiliteracies provide a better way to define literacy because it acknowledges the role that technologies, multimodalities, semiotics, and media play in literacy and how meaning is constructed and communicated. A multiliteracies theoretical framework has implications for systemic as well as individual changes in both schools and broader societies. This course will trace some of the historical roots of multiliteracies in critical theory as well as analyze how multiliteracies are developing in practical and theoretical terms in the current world.