Anthropology Discussion

Discussion 2 questions                                        Madeleine Gardner
                                                                October 3, 2016

• Define literacy, basic literacy, critical literacy, and dynamic literacy according to Westby. Why does she bother to differentiate?

Literacy is the state of being literate, meaning one can read and write… and speak and compute and solve problems at levels of proficient necessary to function on the job and in society.

Basic literacy is reading along the lines, served as a memory support for list making or remembering religious texts and for transmitting simple directions on familiar topics.

Critical literacy is reading between the lines, to analyze, interpret, synthesize, and to explain.

Dynamic literacy is reading across the lines, that is reading multiple texts, comparing, contrasting their content, and integrating their ideas and reading beyond the lines.

This is important because by the mid to later third of the 20th century, basic literacy was no longer sufficient in technological, global economies.

• Define the difference between phonographic and logographic script and identify languages each is associated with.

Cultures have taken varying approaches to coding language sounds onto symbols. These systems can be categorized as logographic, based on meaning units (words or morphemes).

Phonographic systems are based on phonological units. They may be syllabic segmental (alphabetic with individual phonemes) or featural (alphabetic/phonemic with marks for matter of production).

Ex) Chinese uses a logographic script based on words and the Japanese uses Chinese logographs.

Ex) Phonological scripts vary. Some, such as Hebrew and Arabic are consonant alphabets, with vowels being unwritten.

• What is an interesting characteristic of learning associated with logographic vs. phonographic scripts?

Although readers of all languages use both scripts Coltheart described, readers of logographic scripts are more likely to use a whole word lexical representation and readers of syllabic and alphabetic systems are more likely to use phonological processes of pronouncing letter strings.

• The relationship between phonological awareness (the ability to hear units of sound) and orthography (writing) vary across languages. What is one interesting example illustrating this relationship from Westby’s p 257-

Phoneme awareness depends on exposure to literacy and cross-linguistic studies indicate that the rate of phonemic development depends on the nature of the orthography used.

According to the degree of phoneme-grapheme correspondence, orthographies can be put on an orthographic depth continuum from transparent, or shallow orthographies where an almost perfect mapping of phonemes onto graphemes to deep orthographies where the same letter can represent different phonemes.

• For example: Finnish and Spanish have shallow orthographies, while English has a deeper orthography (many different ways to write a sound). The need to decode deep orthographies may account for delayed reading proficiency in English children.

• In English, and many other languages such as Arabic, there are differences between spoken and written language. Outline the educational impacts of young children not being exposed to text in the home.

It will slow the reading/ writing process as both correspond and discontinuous studies will not heavily impact a mind that has already learned one language and continually practices that of on a daily basis with the closest members in their life typically.

• Based on your answer to this question, how might differences in exposure or access to text explain the relationship between poverty or discrimination and educational performance?

Differences in exposure of access to text might explain the inability to get a job or to flourish upwards into society because of a varying primary language.

• Read in detail Westby p. 263-7 regarding the organization of texts and stories in different cultures. Reflect on the texts (or stories) in your culture (or a culture you are familiar with) and point out if this is compatible or not with Westby’s characterization of that culture.

I am American and ironically I compare more in the art of story telling with the Asians, the direct contrasting culture of the Western style. I’m not sure if Westby’s conception of this culture’s ways are correct but I’m going to assume for this question they are. He states, “Asian texts are indirect, developing in a widening gyre. The circles or gyres turn around the topic and show it from a variety of tangential views, but the topic is never looked at directly”, I tend to do this a lot within explaining a story naturally, with a idealist tone. He adds, “Ideas are developed in terms of what they are not, rather than in terms of what they are”.

• What are the origins of Ajami?

Ajami is a writing system across a swath of Islam- influenced sub-Saharan Africa that applies modified Arabic script to phonetic rendering of their language. It was created centuries ago, by Islamic teachers to disseminate the religion to the African masses, and it became in the 20th century, the chosen language of anti-colonial nationalist resistance.  It’s a key to unlock the African perspective on centuries of history, as well as literature, religion and even medicine.

• What spoken languages use Ajami?

Islamic and African

• Ajami texts record much of the culture and history of central Africa, what are some barriers that have prevented their translation and use by anthropologists and historians?

They have never been translated. It’s a difficult writing system to learn, a reader must know both the Arabic script and the spoken language of a particular African culture, and a good understanding of that culture.