ABSTRACT
“Literacy is situated,” writes Taylor (2000), reiterating assertions by many other theorists who have worked to represent reading and writing as complex social practices, inextricable from their uses in specific times and places (Barton, Hamilton, & Ivanic, 2000; Gee, 1996; Scribner, 1984; Street, 1984). In stressing the situated nature of literacy, social theories counter traditional conceptions that see literacy as a discrete set of skills residing in individual, cognitive abilities. Taking it as given that “literacy is situated,” theorists have been challenged in the past few decades to comprehend how current technological and social changes play out in terms of literacies: economic globalization, digital communication, and world-wide migration all have consequences for how we read and compose texts (Kress, 2003; Lankshear & Knobel, 2007; New London Group, 1996). When the space of composing is virtual space, and texts and images flow easily across borders; when individuals and groups of people move with ease from one part of the globe to another; and when personal identities are becoming more and more layered and complex, defining the “situatedness” of reading and writing becomes a complicated question.
