ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the way in which linguists since the 1970s have conceptualised literacy as a wider social practice or set of practices deeply embedded in particular contexts which enable us to do things, make relationships and take on particular roles within a literate society. Before the 1970s and 1980s, the dominant theoretical frameworks in literacy research tended to perceive literacy in fairly narrow terms and as a universal and largely predictable process. Understood as the mastering of linguistic rules, literacy can be treated as a social variable that exists independently of any particular individual, society or cultural tradition. Muralism as a form of spreading literacy is related to a model of public reading which preserves features of orality through its collective use. The concept of vernacular literacies is very useful in exploring what is happening when people interact online.
