ABSTRACT
New literacy studies (NLS), a field characterized by the consideration of everyday literacy practices in social contexts, has played an important role in locating literacy issues within wider contexts of social activities, and this account provides a conceptual map to show the relevant lineages and developments of the field. In this survey, I begin by providing an account of how NLS was conceptualized and framed, and then move into a discussion of ways in which it branched off into different but related fields such as new literacies, mul-timodality and multiliteracies, as well as multilingual literacies. I conclude by pointing to some new and emerging directions, including an ecological approach to literacy, and aesthetic and materially situated approaches to literacy practices research. The relevance for this field for English studies lies partly in the way in which literacy is carefully situated within wider social and cultural practices and partly within the insight that literacies can be located within sites and spaces and across different timescales. These insights can add to the conceptual richness researchers bring to the study of language and literacy both in and outside classroom contexts (see also Chapters 2, 25, 27 and 28).
