Literacies Across Media: Playing the Text

225 Pages·2002·0.74 MB·English

by  Margaret Mackey

Literacies Across Media
The contemporary young reader learns from a very early age to read and
interpret texts through a broad range of media. Literacies Across Media
explores how a group of boys and girls, aged from 10 to 14, make sense of
narratives in a variety of formats, including print, electronic book, video,
DVD, computer game and CD-ROM. This book records these young
people over a period of eighteen months as they read, view and play
different texts, demonstrating variations and consistencies of interpretative
behaviour across different media.
Margaret Mackey analyses how the activities of reading, viewing and
playing intertwine and affect each other’s development. Her in-depth
research shows young readers developing strategies for interpreting narra-
tives through encounters with a diverse range of texts and media. The
study breaks new ground in its illustration and exploration of the impact
of cross-media fertilization on how young readers come to an under-
standing of how to make sense of stories. Literacies Across Media offers
both a vivid account of a group of young readers coming to terms with
texts and a radical perspective on the growth of a generation of young
readers. It is thought-provoking, fascinating and highly informative
reading not only for theoreticians interested in the reading process, but
also teachers, librarians, parents and anybody involved with young people
and their texts.
Margaret Mackey is Associate Professor at the School of Library and
Information Studies, University of Alberta. She is the North American
editor of Children’s Literature in Education and has published widely on
children’s literature in an era of technological and commercial transition.

Literacies Across Media
Playing the text
Margaret Mackey
London and New York
First published 2002
by RoutledgeFalmer
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by RoutledgeFalmer
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.
RoutledgeFalmer is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
© 2002 Margaret Mackey
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-21897-3 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-27423-7 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0–415–27283–1(Print Edition)
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
1 Ecologies of literacy: introduction 1
Snapshots in close-up 1
Changing definitions 3
Reading embedded in daily life 4
Changing ecologies of literacy 5
An ecology of attention 8
Attention and the body 9
Work and play 11
Questions about literacies across media 12
The study 12
The findings 14
Conclusions 16
2 The study: a description and a framework 18
The project 18
The chronology of the project 20
The texts 22
The activities 24
The participants 25
The data 26
The data analysis 28
The theoretical and practical precedents 29
Conclusions 31
3 Janice 33
Ecologies in close-up 33
Janice 33
vi Contents
Janice’s media week 34
Janice and books 34
E-books and picture books 35
The Way Things Work: CD-ROMs versus books 36
A media ecology 37
Re-visiting texts 38
Communicating with computers 41
Heading for high school 43
The asset model 43
Conclusions 45
4 Jack 47
Jack’s media diary 47
Jack and computers 48
The role of partners 49
Jack’s choices 52
The textual world of Men in Black 54
The aesthetics of the e-book 55
Jack on the way to high school 58
An asset model 62
Conclusions 63
5 Layered textual identities: the diaries 65
Layers of text and textual identity 65
Daily fiction 66
A 1997 snapshot 67
Five girls 69
Commonalities and divergences 70
Internet use 72
Signature responses 74
Social elements of personal tastes 76
Conclusions 78
6 Salience and fluency: the beginnings of stories 80
The fifteen text openings 80
The texts 80
Salience and fluency 82
Choosing among media 86
Text processing in a multimedia environment 87
Conclusions 92
Contents vii
7 ‘Remediation’: e-books and DVDs 94
‘Remediation’ 94
The electronic book 95
‘Remediating’ the book 96
The students’ responses to the e-book 98
Issues of transparency and opacity 100
‘Remediating’ the video 102
The students’ responses to DVD 103
Changing the experience of film 106
Conclusions 107
8 Handling the text: picture books and CD-ROMs 109
Hands 109
Reading the picture book 112
‘The most thinking book’ 114
Hands at work 115
Bodies at work 117
The affect of hands together 119
Lulu’s Enchanted Book 119
Deictics and graphics 123
The Way Things Work 125
Handling the CD-ROM 127
Conclusions 128
9 Narrative strategies: playing Starship Titanic 131
Recording the game 131
Starship Titanic 131
Analyzing the transcripts 132
Playing Starship Titanic 135
At play on the borders of the diegetic 137
‘Soft mastery’ 141
Conclusions 145
10 Visual strategies: playing Myst 147
The story extractor 147
Myst: the set-up 148
The game begins 148
Megan and Angela’s game 149
Exploring visual content 150
Starting out 151
viii Contents
Acts of noticing 152
Visual attention 153
The interactive spectator 154
The role of intuition 155
Analyzing the game 157
The pedagogy of the nebulous 159
Other players, other issues 159
Conclusions 161
11 The complexities of deixis: reading ‘Tunnel’ 164
The double deictic of writing and reading 164
Breathing and attention 166
Reading ‘Tunnel’ 166
Redescribing the deitics of ‘Tunnel’ 168
Gregory and Jack 169
Jack’s reading of ‘Tunnel’ 169
Gregory’s reading of ‘Tunnel’ 172
Interpretive moments 174
Voice and recognition 175
Gaps and volition 175
Rules of reading 176
Reading the best text possible 177
Public, private and shared readings 178
Conclusions 179
12 Playing the text: conclusions 181
One historical moment and its general implications 181
Playing the text 181
Some implications of playfulness in the processing of texts 188
Theories of play and art 189
Re-workings and re-playings 191
An ecology of attention 194
Conditions and constraints of the study 196
Conclusions 197
Bibliography 203
Index 208
Acknowledgements
Many people helped me as I worked on this book, but readers will not get
very far into the early chapters without realizing that my greatest debt is to
the young people who participated in the project. Without exception they
were extremely friendly, impressively intelligent, unfailingly helpful and
always fascinating. The co-operating schools also lived up to that label in
the fullest sense; administrators and teachers smoothed my way at every
opportunity. My only regret is that I cannot name them all in order to
thank them properly. I hope they will accept my profound gratitude on an
anonymous basis.
Six graduate students worked on particular aspects of this project over
a three year period: Jennifer Branch, Kim Fraser, Mary-Lee Judah, Jyoti
Mangat, Dan Mirau and Kristine van Leenan. Jenn and Dan in particular
were central to the achievement of this project. I will never think of this
study without remembering what a good time we all had on our trips to
the schools over that year and how much they sharpened my powers of
observation and reflection.
Another crucial contributor to this project was Deidre Johnston, the
world’s most diligent transcriber. The conditions under which some of the
tapes were made were far from ideal, and Deidre took extraordinary steps
to ensure that as little as possible was lost to acoustic problems. Anyone
who has ever recorded the dialogue that accompanies the playing of a loud
computer game against the background noise of a gurgling aquarium, and
then expected to read the results in a usable transcript, will know the scale
of my obligation to her. It was a pleasure to work with her.
My colleagues in the School of Library and Information Studies and the
Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta also played a substantial
role in helping me to make this book the best I can manage. Many people
helped in various ways, and Jill McClay, Anna Altmann and Ingrid
Johnston read many draft chapters and supplied excellent advice. Many
students also took an interest in this project, contributing ideas, energies
and reminders of the importance of the topic.