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Grounded literacies: the power of listening to, telling and performing community stories
Author(s) -
Hall Christine,
Thomson Pat
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
literacy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.649
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1741-4369
pISSN - 1741-4350
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-4369.2010.00553.x
Subject(s) - creativity , vernacular , active listening , sociology , power (physics) , argument (complex analysis) , linguistics , the arts , representation (politics) , psychology , visual arts , art , social psychology , communication , political science , philosophy , physics , biochemistry , chemistry , quantum mechanics , politics , law
This article offers an analysis of community arts to develop an argument about the power of vernacular literacies. We draw on Paul Willis' work about grounded aesthetics and everyday symbolic creativity in common culture, and Scollon and Scollon's notions of geosemiotics, to analyse a community play written and performed in a council estate in Nottingham, England. In particular, we argue that Scollon and Scollon's idea of the ‘semiotic aggregate’ offers a useful analytical tool for understanding and evaluating the significance of participation, recognition, representation and place in multimodal texts.