ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how literacy is practiced in nuanced ways across different cultural communities. Through a number of examples, we made visible how young children navigated multiple social worlds organized by sets of rules, interactions, and social practices, which can be challenged and changed. Young children are exposed to language in various contexts before entering school—homes, communities, peers, and the environment. They use the term language variation to refer to the fact that a language is not uniform. Young children's language usage is purposeful; their communicative repertoires serve as tools to engage with others in their immediate contexts—to interact with adults, to connect with other children, and to participate in sociocultural activities. A relational literacies approach "compels a consideration of agency as an always contingent and contextualized relational practice as well as a possibility for action". From a sociocultural theoretical perspective, literacies and literacy practices are complex, interactive, and interpretative actions located in specific social and cultural realms.
