Developing a Transliteracies Framework for a Connected World. (March 2017) - Stornaiuolo, Amy
This article introduces a transliteracies framework to conceptually account for the contingency and instability of literacy practices on the move and to offer a set of methodological tools for investigating these mobilities. Taking the paradox of mobility—the simultaneous restricting or regulation of movement that accompanies mobility—as its central dialectic, a transliteracies framework functions as a flexible heuristic for attending to how meaning making and power are intertwined in and distributed across social and material relationships. We argue that a transliteracies framework encompasses two primary dimensions of mobile literacy practices: (a) the everyday activity of creating, maintaining, and disassembling associations across movements of people and things (indicated by the prefix trans- ) and (b) the dynamic and material nature of meaning making in activity (indicated by the plural root word literacies ). To trace the emergent and consequential ways mobilities are managed within and across systems, we introduce four analytical tools for inquiry: emergence, uptake, resonance, and scale. These inquiry tools address the paradox of mobility by highlighting the systemic dimensions of practice that create and perpetuate inequities. We argue that these transliteracies tools facilitate an inquiry stance that positions researchers to attend to people's emic meaning-making processes, work to balance multiple perspectives, account for privilege and position, question normative assumptions and beliefs, and engage in and value multiple ways of knowing.