The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy

Everything that is involved in being and becoming literate is the concern of this interdisciplinary group of distinguished scholars.

David R. Olson (Edited by), Nancy Torrance (Edited by)

9780521680523, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 9 February 2009

624 pages, 33 b/w illus. 5 colour illus. 11 tables
25.1 x 17.5 x 2.8 cm, 1.07 kg

"The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy, edited by David Olson and Nancy Torrance from University of Toronto, joins a hefty list of Cambridge Handbooks on various topics related to psychology, language and learning. This handbook sets out to examine literacy in its widest sense; to examine both the visual signs for linguistic forms, and the social and personal uses of these signs, from mundane to the literary, both historically and currently. It aims to address a gap that it identifies in the literature: the lack of an authoritative text on literacy as a field in itself, and in providing such a text, further aims to provide scope for future interdisciplinary work...."
--Rauno Parrila, University of Alberta and Nenagh Kemp, University of Tasmania, Australia, Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne

This handbook marks the transformation of the topic of literacy from the narrower concerns with learning to read and write to an interdisciplinary enquiry into the various roles of writing and reading in the full range of social and psychological functions in both modern and developing societies. It does so by exploring the nature and development of writing systems, the relations between speech and writing, the history of the social uses of writing, the evolution of conventions of reading, the social and developmental dimensions of acquiring literate competencies, and, more generally, the conceptual and cognitive dimensions of literacy as a set of social practices. Contributors to the volume are leading scholars drawn from such disciplines as linguistics, literature, history, anthropology, psychology, the neurosciences, cultural psychology, and education.

Part I. Literacy as a Scientific Subject: 1. The literacy episteme (from Innis to Derrida) Jens Brockmeier and David Olson
Part II. Literacy and Language: 2. Grammotology Peter T. Daniels
3. Speech and writing Roy Harris
4. The origins and co-evolution of literacy and numeracy Steven Chrisomalis
5. Are there linguistic consequences of literacy? Comparing the potentials of language use in speech and writing Douglas Biber
6. Becoming a literate language user: oral and written text construction across adolescence Ruth A. Berman and Dorit Ravid
7. The challenge of academic language Catherine Snow and Paola Uccelli
8. The basic processes in reading: insights from neuroscience Usha Goswami
9. Language and literacy from a cognitive neuroscience perspective Karl Magnus Petersson, Martin Ingvaar, and Alexandra Reis
Part III. Literacy and Literatures: 10. Ways of reading Elizabeth Long
11. Conventions of reading Heather Murray
12. Literacy, reading and concepts of the self Carolyn Steedman
13. Reading as a woman, being read as a woman Lisbeth Larsson
14. Literacy and the history of science Karine Chemla
15. Scientific literacy Steven Norris and Linda Phillips
16. Digital literacy Teresa Dobson and John Willinsky
17. Literacy, video games and popular culture James Paul Gee
Part IV. Literacy and Society: 18. Ethnography of writing and reading Brian Street
19. The origins of Western literacy: literacy in Ancient Greece and Rome Rosalind Thomas
20. Literacy from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages, c. 300–800 Nicholas Everett
21. Chinese literacy Feng Wang, Yaching Tsai and William Shi-Yuan Wang
22. The elephant in the room: language and literacy in the Arab world Niloofar Haeri
23. Literacy, modernization, the intellectual community and civil society in the western world Frits van Holthoon
Part V. Literacy and Education: 24. The teaching of literacy skills in Western Europe: an historical perspective (16th to 20th centuries) A.-M. Chartier
25. The configuration of literacy as a domain of knowledge Liliana Tolchinsky
26. Literate thinking: metalinguistics and metacognition Bruce Homer
27. Cultural and developmental predispositions to literacy Alison Garton and Chris Pratt
28. Literacy and international development: education and literacy as human rights Joe Farrell
29. Adult literacy education in industrialized nations Tom Sticht
30. New technologies for literacy and international development Daniel Wagner
31. Literacy theory and literacy policy David Olson.

Subject Areas: Educational psychology [JNC], Applied linguistics for ELT [EBAL]