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Thomas Franco
Nancy Roche
Writing 1010-013
7 October 2014
Social Literacy
In todays world there are many different facets of life, like the physical,
emotional, and interactive between one another. 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 identical. In David Barton and Mary Hamiltons book
Worlds of Literacy published in 1994, the chapter Literary Practices explained the
authors observations on the complexities of literary and social practices within different
domains of life. Barton and Hamilton have found that there are three attributes that have
to be analyzed in order to understand different literacy practices within different domains.
These three attributes are events, practices, and texts within a literary domain.
Barton and Hamiltons main purpose in writing this essay was to analyze events
within domains to learn about their literary practices and applications. Through historical
events they have learned that social literacies are complex and diverse topics. 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 at her place of work, but they are most
definitely different in how the literary practices are applied and accomplished. Barton and
Hamilton believe the differences between the two are within the use of literary practices.

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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
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 of certain domains. 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). One must study a certain
persons history to justifiably enter a domain, and begin to understand what the practices
of that domain are.
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. Domains of higher society discourse humans have certain
literary practices, as where the lower society discourse humans have different literary
practices. Both the higher and lower social class humans are capable of understanding
and performing each others practices, but they cannot switch domains because they are
not privileged to one another. They belong to the domain they were born into unless one
person makes major strides in society to be able to jump between both, which is rare to
see. 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 that many of different literacy practices,
rather there are different types of literacies (10).

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In these different literacies there are texts that are a big part of studying the
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 life. Barton and
Hamilton analyze text because they have observed that texts from everyday life differ in
importance from more formal texts such as educational pieces of literature (9).
Throughout Barton and Hamiltons chapter they have explained their views on
what makes up different literary practices and how they affect 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 the practice has survived over the years, and how their
goals are reached within a domain.

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Works Cited
Hamilton, Mary, avid Barton, and oz Ivani . Literacy Practices. Worlds of Literacy.
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1994. N. pag. Print.