This is the post-print of Paxton, M. 2007 Abstract: This article explores the notion of 'interim literacies' by drawing on data from a research project which used linguistic and intertextual analysis of first year student writing in economics to investigate the intersection of academic discourse and student voice. This research has provided a rich set of data to illustrate the ways in which first year student texts are built from a range of past and present discourses, discourse strategies and genres. Students make meaning by reworking past discourses, appropriating and adapting new discourses to make them their own. The article goes on to develop the notion of interim literacies by refining criteria for deciding what interim literacies are and what they are not. The notion of interim literacies is used to move away from a 'deficit' view of English second language writers in the university and it is argued that an analysis and understanding of interim literacies can contribute to teaching and to transformation. The article concludes by providing evidence of the ways in which this research project has impacted on teaching and curricula in the university course where the project was undertaken.
IntroductionThis article is concerned with literacy, a term which has absorbed a range of different meanings and which many theorists consider to be a contested term. A range of theory and research that focuses on literacy and literacy practices within social practice, using mainly ethnographic methods, has developed as a sub-discipline known as the New Literacy Studies (NLS). Through the New Literacy Studies, literacy has become the focus of interest for disciplines, such as anthropology, sociology, psychology and education. Two models identified by Street (1995), namely an autonomous model and an ideological model, have become influential in theorising literacy in the NLS. Street described the notion that literacy is a universal technical skill, as the 'autonomous' model of literacy. He contrasted this notion with the 'ideological' model, which argues that not only does literacy vary across social contexts but that its uses and meanings are always embedded in relations of power. If literacy is treated as autonomous, then the social features tend to be naturalised and the history and ideology behind school literacy is disguised.This article sets out to explore the notion of 'interim literacies'1, a term which was introduced and developed in a research project undertaken at the University of Cape Town (Paxton, 2004) which used linguistic and intertextual analysis of first year student writing to investigate the intersection of the academic discourses and student voice. The research project will be described and the notion of interim literacies will be further developed by grounding it empirically in data from the project in order to clarify what interim literacies are. The discussion will identify a set of features typical of interim literacies and then consider whether all language and literacy practices at a foundational ...
is Coordinator of the Language Development Group in the Centre for Higher Education Development at the University of Cape Town. She has experience designing and teaching access level academic literacy courses and postgraduate language education courses as well as in staff and curriculum development.
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