Representations of Language Learning and Literacy

Elena West recently completed a PhD in Modern Languages and Translation at the University of Bristol. She has taught academic writing in UK universities and Italian and French in Adult Education. She is a member of the British Academy’s Early Career Researcher Network.

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Credits

Introduction: Representations of language learning and literacy and the demise of the powers of verbal language

1. Victor’s story

2. The long life of the powers of language

3. A paradigm for language-based conflict and the role of literacy

4. The status of representations of language learning and literacy in literature and literary criticism

5. The rationale of the practical applications and a word about terminology

6. Overview of chapters

Chapter 1. Three approaches to the study of representations of language learning and literacy

1.1 The language learner approach

1.2 The translation approach

1.3 The literacy narrative approach

Conclusion

Chapter 2. Intersemiotic conflict in Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of memory

2.1 Positioning Rodriguez as a Chicano

2.2 Rodriguez’s controversial view of the world: “the private” versus “the public”

2.3 The competing logics of Hunger of memory

2.4 Intersemiotic conflict in Hunger of memory

2.5 Hunger of memory reworded

Conclusion

Chapter3. The letter kills, singing gives life: literacy and multimodality in Diego Marani’s Nuova grammatica finlandese

3.1 Diego Marani and Nuova grammatica finlandese

3.2 The reception of Nuova grammatica finlandese: from tragic story about language and identity to cannibalistic pulp fiction

3.3 The competing logics of Nuova grammatica finlandese

3.4 Imagined communities: setting the scene for an allegorical novel about essay-text literacy and nationalism

3.5 The letter kills, singing gives life

Conclusion

Chapter 4. Illiteracy, class, and multimodality in Vincenzo Rabito’s Terra matta

4.1 Literacy, class, the classroom, and literature: a changing correlation?

4.2 The typescript: style, materiality and "rabitese"

4.3 Terra matta and the rewriting by Einaudi

4.4 The reception before and after the publication: an “old” typewriter and a “primitive” peasant locked in a room

4.5 Terra matta’s literacy narrative: a resourceful learner familiar with essay-text literacy and foreign languages

4.6 The typescript as a multimodal literacy narrative

4.7 Conclusion

Conclusion: Strategies for reading literacy narratives and future directions

Index