ABSTRACT
In this final chapter we focus attention on the relationship of microethnographic discourse analysis studies of classroom language and literacy events to other types of research and lines of inquiry. As we noted in the Introduction and in chapter 1, the discussion throughout this book builds on discussions within what is called the New Literacy Studies. In brief, the New Literacy Studies involve an approach to research that foregrounds anthropological and sociolinguistic methods and that closely attends to issues of cultural, political, and economic ideology. There are different emphases within the New Literacy Studies. One line of inquiry concerns the relationship of literacy practices and the new capitalism and its implications for defining work, learning, and identity (Gee, Hull, & Lankshear, 1996; Jones, 2000; Lankshear, Gee, Knobel, & Searle, 1997). Another is concerned with how literacy practices constitute learning practices both inside and outside of classrooms (Gee, 1994, 2003; Knobel, 1999; Luke, 1988; 1995; Ormerod & Ivanic, 2000). Street (1984, 1992, 1993a, 1993b, 1997, 2003) has focused attention on the cultural and political dynamics and diversity of literacy practices, the relationship of literacy practices and nationalism, how literacy practices are related to power relations, and how people adopt and adapt the literacy practices in their lives as part of the borders between their lives and the imposition of the state and dominant social and political institutions. Both the New Literacy Studies and microethnographic discourse analysis approaches to the study of classroom language and literacy events share what Street (1984, 1995b) has labeled an ideological model of literacy. Literacy is not a thing in and of itself, a set of autonomous cognitive and linguistic skills, but a set of social and cultural practices embedded in and a part of broader, ongoing, and evolving social, cultural, and political processes. But relationships among research perspectives are not so easily given or assumed. We need to ask: Is there meaningfulness in catgorizing both the New Literacy Studies and micro-ethnographic discourse analysis studies of classroom language and literacy events as ideological approaches to the study of literacy? What would give such a categorization meaningfulness?
