ABSTRACT
Our aims in this chapter are to document the ways in which young school students are acculturated into the uses of texts that combine verbal and imaginal information, and to explore the possible consequences of that acculturation process. We pursue these aims from a historical perspective and through detailed examinations of school texts given to students beginning education in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In the PRC, yuwen is the term used to describe reading, literacy, language, literature teaching, and learning in school. In this chapter, we first examine constructs from the history of early reading education and how they compare to the assumptions and practices of early language education embodied in yuwen. We then turn to an examination of a small sample of the first yuwen texts currently used in schools in the PRC. Specifically, we use a multiliteracies framework to analyze three aspects of yuwen texts, focusing on mixtures of modalities, genres, and voices. Through these analyses we argue that yuwen, literacy and reading, and the acculturation of the literate student-subject more generally, together entail an inscription of particular attributes of the “school-literate” child, and, further, that it is only through detailed analyses of the materials of literacy and language education that the nature and consequences of such inscription processes can be made visible.
