"Thinking in terms of literacy as a discourse invites us to look at ahow people are being positioned by dominant discourses and how terms like literacy, illiteracy, funtional literacy and others categorise people and impose social identities."
In this excerpt from her book, Papen discusses the various definitions/types of literacy: functional literacy, critical literacy, and the liberal tradition of literacy. Each theory has informed programs and political forums that help drive the social discourse, defined as a representation or a description of particular aspects of the physical, social and psychological world. Through cultural influences and sociopolitical powers, literacy has been taken up and viewed as a right or necessity, enforcing more negative views towards other ideas of literacy (or the "lack" of literacy in oral-based communities).
For me, literacy cannot be defined without the context and knowledge of why we have literacy in the first place. The motives and reasoning behind why we practice literacy are normally based in the necessity to communicate, receive or relay information. Although skills-based approaches to literacy do function in many aspects, it decontextualizes the environments and situations in which literacy takes place. The functional ability to decode text takes place almost entirely in forms of lists, and until the words in that list are provided within context, there usually is no meaning or substance behind the words, except the task of reading them.
