Texts and literacies of the Shi Jinrui

Abstract

In post‐industrial societies saturated with the multimodal texts of consumer culture—film, computer games, interactive toys, SMS, email, the internet, television, DVDs—young people are developing literacy skills and knowledge in and for a world significantly changed from that of their parents and educators. Given this context, this paper seeks to demonstrate the necessity of rethinking and extending traditional notions of text and literacy, and consider the social and cultural implications of such a shift.

Notes

* Faculty of Social and Behavioural Studies, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia. Email: [email protected]

While advertisers and service providers are increasingly communicate with clients via SMS, providing for example weather reports, horoscopes, stock profiles, surfing reports, news bulletins and advertising, my focus here is on its use by individuals.

Information regarding computing programs written for the production of squeeze‐text can be found at: http://adamspiers.org/computing/email2sms/Lingua_EN_Squeeze.html, http://www.cpan.org/modules/by‐authors/id/J/JA/JARIAALTO/Lingua‐EN‐Squeeze–1998.1204.readme

Accessed at: http://books.guardian.co.uk/games/mobilepoems/0,9405,450649,00.html

A number of newspaper and online articles, as well as talk‐back radio, across the United Kingdom and Australia have recently directed themselves at the ‘issue’ of txting in relation to declining spelling and grammatical standards, falling grades and use of mobile phone technology. Underlying these debates are deeper issues related to the positioning of adolescence in our society, the emergence of new technologies and the shifting mastery that is accompanying this trend.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Victoria Carrington *

* Faculty of Social and Behavioural Studies, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia. Email: [email protected]