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Thomas Klemser
Nancy Roche
Writing 1010-018
8 October 2014
The Ins and Outs of Literacy
According to Barton and Hamilton, literacy is a form of spreading ideas throughout
history as well as being practiced in everybody's dynamic lives. Constantly recurring and always
leaving its mark in the past, literacy practices are unique to each individual and are a part of your
everyday background and culture. Literacy, from how the authors explained it, is dictated by
social place and any changes in your society will cause a change in literacy. This is shown in the
main point of the article by David Barton and Mary Hamilton when it says, Literacy practices
are culturally constructed, and, like all cultural phenomena, they have their roots in the past.
Literacy practices are as fluid, dynamic, and changing as the lives and societies of which they are
a part of (Barton and Hamilton 13). Literacy practices are based of off your culture and are
always changing but leave significant marks in their past. Its not just reading and writing but
more importantly context, text, domains, practices, discourses, social society, and events.
As Barton and Hamilton go on to explain in their article one of the key elements of
literacy practices is text and context. Texts that are part of your everyday life and that are
personal to you as an individual are what is studied of literacy practices. This is explain in the
article when it says, The study of everyday literacy practices points attention to the texts of
everyday life, the texts of personal life; these are distinct from other texts (Barton and Hamilton
9). What is being said here is that texts have multiple roles and can be very broad, but because
its broad it can fit into specific roles that are personal to one. Also literacy changes in context

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and this is shown in the article when it states, Looking at different literacy events it is clear that
literacy is not the same in all contexts; rather, there are different literacies (Barton and Hamilton
10). What this quote means is that context is based off of events that happen daily in your life
which result in different forms of literacy.
Events are important when literacy practices are studied because they give it a
function. Text and context according to Barton and Hamilton are what is the major stake in an
event. In Bartons and Hamiltons words, Literacy events are activities where literacy has a
role. Usually there is a written text, or texts, central to the activity and there may be talk around
the text (Barton and Hamilton 8). This means that literacy activities or events are embedded in
social practices and that text and context is the major stake that events are created by. What
literacy practices do is it shapes the event that is occurring. Events can be in form of written or
spoken but are primarily based off of text and context of literacy practices. These events and
activities are a form of literacy practices that are observable.
Barton and Hamilton later go on to state that another major part of literacy practices is the
domains and discourses that are associated with them. According to Barton and Hamilton, A
domain is a group or community that is defined by their written language and a discourse is how
the group uses it (Barton and Hamilton 8). These can vary from family to religion and many
more. Barton and Hamilton explain how domains play a huge role in literacy practices when they
say, Domains, and the discourse communities associated with them, are not clear-cut, however:
there are questions of the permeability of boundaries, of leakages and movement between
boundaries, and of overlap between domains (Barton and Hamilton 11). What is being said is
that domains serve as a function in the way that they form context for literacy that can be learned
from studying them. What Barton and Hamilton explain is, there are different literacies

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associated with different domains of life (Barton and Hamilton 11). In other words this simply
means that your community and your culture influences your domain significantly, which is why
there are so many different domains throughout the world. Different domains include things
such as family, religion, organizations, workplace, education, and many more which cause
discourses that are unique to every person.
Barton and Hamilton prove that literacy practices are kinetic in the way that they are
constantly changing and new ones are being devised all the time. Occurring to them, literacy
practices do indeed leave a trail through history that people can study to learn more about
specific topics. An example of a literacy practice stake that leaves its mark in history, as Barton
and Hamilton explain, is text that is very broad but can also be specific and play a role for
yourself, and also context that is based off of the events that you partake in in your life. Barton
and Hamilton later go on to explain that domains, which is the community, or group that you
belong to based off your written language and discourses that are how you use them. An
example from the article being a religious group or family member; although it may seem less
important to some people more than others, domains and discourses are what defines you as a
human being and what way makes you uncommon. They go on later to talk about events, and
how they are additionally important because they involve written and/or spoken activities that
shape literacy practices in general. These literacy practices are ingrained in social practices,
which any changes in social result in changes in literacy, and change based off of formality and
informality. That is why as Barton and Hamilton ultimately explain it is crucial to your learning
to get the exposure to these literacy practices and learn new ones that come about, which is all
learned through education and schooling.

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Works Cited
Barton, David, and Mary Hamilton. Situated Literacies Reading and Writing in
Context. New York: Routledge, 2000. Print.