Digital Literacy and Metaphorical Models

Abstract

It is an acknowledged fact that the appearance of new genres in cyberspace has shifted the main focus of instruction strategies nowadays. Learners of any field are challenged by the acquisition of a new type of literacy, digital literacy-how to read and write, or how to interact, in and through the Internet. In this line, websites often show expressions like "home", "visit", "down-load", "link", etc. which are used in a new sense that did not exist before the digital era. Such expressions constitute the manifestation of mental models that have been transferred from traditional conceptual domains onto the new knowledge domain of the Internet. These conceptual metaphors are some of the cognitive models that help in the conceptualization of new cybergenres. This paper points at describing how these cognitive models build our notion of diverse cybergenres in English-e.g. the weblog, the social network, the cybertask. Our aim here consists in detecting these metaphorical models as well as describing and classifying their conceptual mappings between domains. With that purpose, some digital materials are analyzed, so as to test the hypothesis that such mappings and models guide the user's representation of the genre, as a coherent structure. The results make evident some implications on the relevance of Digital Literacy in educational contexts.

Analysing the Digital World and its Metaphoricity: Cybergenres and Cybermetaphors in the 21st Century

“…According to Summey (2013), the notion of 'Digital Literacies' is understood as "the essential skills for managing information and communication in the rapidly changing and increasingly digital world that is the 21st century" (2013: 3). Thus, digital literacies require online users to learn how to use technological resources (Girón-García & Navarro i Ferrando, 2014). In this vein, the connection between the knowledge of technical skills and the previous conceptualization of prototypical situations trigger new online reading modes (i.e.…”

“…In this vein, the connection between the knowledge of technical skills and the previous conceptualization of prototypical situations trigger new online reading modes (i.e. 'New Literacy') (Girón-García, 2013;Girón-García & Navarro i Ferrando, 2014;. Furthermore, the ability to read digital texts allows for the appearance of a more specific concept known as 'Spontaneous Digital Literacy'.…”

“…In recent years, there has been a great deal of research on cognitive models in the digital environment in order to understand the conceptualization of digital genres (i.e. cybergenres) (Navarro i Ferrando et al, 2008;Navarro i Ferrando & Silvestre-López, 2009;Girón-García & Navarro i Ferrando, 2014;. Likewise, these recent studies suggest that metaphorical models guide these online navigation patterns through previous knowledge configurations already active in the users' minds, representing prototypical situations (i.e.…”

“…RESUMEN: Internet ha experimentado un gran impacto en los últimos años, afectando significativamente el campo de la Lingüística, ya que el mundo virtual ha alentado a los académicos en ese campo a explorar la interacción de los usuarios con los Cibergéneros (Girón-García y Navarro i Ferrando, 2014;. En el campo de la Lingüística Cognitiva, algunos autores han sugerido que los MCIs ya activos en el sistema conceptual de los usuarios pueden guiar los patrones de navegación en línea, derivando en nuevas formas de alfabetización.…”

Analysis of Digital Literacy and Metaphoric Perceptions of Teacher Candidate

“…Traditionally, we used to read on the paper format (books, articles, reviews, etc.) but with the arrival of the Internet, a new way of reading appeared 'Digital texts' (Giron-Garcia & Navarro, 2014). In the past, however, there was a tradition of reading printed materials or writing on paper; today, with technology, the act of reading/writing has changed, and this has contributed to the emergence of new forms of literacy.…”