Metaphors for Literacy: A Cultural Model of White, Middle-Class Parents
✍ Scribed by Steven Bialostok
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2002
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 131 KB
- Volume
- 13
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0898-5898
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✦ Synopsis
This study integrates sociocognitive, sociocultural, and sociolinguistic approaches to investigate the "normative" cultural model of literacy held by 15 White, middle-class parents of kindergarten children. Through qualitative analysis of interviews to expose ideological effects, I examine the recurring metaphors used by these parents. I argue that these metaphors do not constitute these parents' understanding; rather, the metaphors are governed by three propositional cultural schemas about literacy. This article addresses one of those schemas in which reading books-a literary form of literacy-is linguistically indirectly indexed as moral worth. This White, middle-class emphasis on book reading as a prototypical literacy, following Bourdieu, is a marker of distinction of the proponent's social class membership. Further, institutions designed to facilitate the literacy of children and families construct identical discourses; teaching children "to read" becomes secondary to the primary goal of reshaping the moral character of families, particularly nonmainstream and minoritized families.