Discourse Systems and Aspirin Bottles: On Literacy

Abstract

This paper first argues that any use of language involves three interlocking systems: the referential system (“literal meaning”), the contextualization system (which has primarily to do with maintaining social relations), and the “ideology” system (the expression of values and beliefs). It then goes on to show how these three systems operate simultaneously in oral texts constructed by two high school students, one black and one white, engaged in a school-based literacy-related task involving reading, discussion, and interpretation. A brief look at the operation of the ideology system in two different black women interviewing for jobs follows. The paper then draws a connection between the three language systems, together seen as constituting culturally variable “discourse systems,” and literacy. The conclusion is that there is a paradox in the concept of literacy: one has to define literacy either quite narrowly as “the ability to decode and encode writing” or one has to define it in such a way that reading and writing do not play a privileged role in the definition. Finally, the paper shows how an expanded view of literacy in terms of “discourse systems” applies to a practical literacy task, namely, reading the back of an aspirin bottle.