Definitions II

This week's readings add to our discussion of definitions of "information," "literacy," and "information literacy" by addressing a number of broad issues: the differences and similarities between orality and literacy, the history of "information literacy" as a concept, and critical reflection as an end-in-view for information literacy education.

Orality and Literacy

McLuhan (1994) treats language and literacy as "extensions" of human beings.  For example, writes McLuhan (1994), language enabled human "intellect to detach itself from the vastly wider reality."  It is a technology that causes a pause between the organism and its environment, enabling a shift in attention (p. 79).  Literacy - in this context referring to the written word - advances the detachment.  The phonetic alphabet, argues McLuhan (1994), was a homogenizing force, extending patterns of "uniformity and continuity" across space and time (p. 84).  As a technology, the phonetic alphabet - "semantically meaningless letters" corresponding to "semantically meaningless sounds" - allowed human beings to break out of the local communities that provided the context for understanding spoken language (p. 83).

While it does not appear to me that McLuhan (1994) is necessarily placing a value judgment on either orality or literacy, he does clearly imply that literacy is a further, or more advanced, "extension" of human beings.  The "literacy thesis" discussed by Buschman (2009) does hold that literacy brings a number of positive consequences [such as?] and that literate cultures are more advanced or civilized, and therefore better, than primarily oral cultures.  The thesis also posits a clean break between between orality and literacy.  Buschman's (2009) analysis of critiques of literacy and information literacy highlight thinkers who call that strict division into question.  The "literacy thesis" is critiqued from two angles, according to Buschman.  The first questions whether there is indeed a "great divide" between oral cultures and literate cultures and whether literacy leads to a series of cultural developments, including democracy, bureaucracy, scientific rationalism, etc. (p. 99-100).  The second critique questions whether this is even a fundamental difference between orality and literacy (p. 100).

Buschman (2009) does, however, seem to support anthropologist Jack Goody's conclusion that the written word does enable a certain distancing.  Goody notes "The analytic process that writing itself entails ... make[s] possible the habitual separating out into formally distinct units of the various cultural elements," destroying the "mystical 'wholeness' of nonliterate societies" (Goody in Buschman, 2009, p. 103).  This conclusion is not much different than the one McLuhan (1994) draws.  However, Buschman (2009) makes clear that Goody does not believe in the strict division between orality and literacy (p. 104).  McLuhan (1994) seems to agree on this point as well.  He writes, "electric technology seems to favor the inclusive and participational spoken word over the specialist written word" (McLuhan, 1994, p. 82).

I wonder to what degree "critical reflexivity," as it is being used here - i.e. to talk about the distancing activity that allows parts of the environment to become objects of inquiry - is just the outcome of language, the making of significant (vocal) gestures, in general?

Critical Reflection

Buschman (2009) argues that information literacy shares with other "new" literacies - e.g. media literacy, digital literacy, etc. - the notion that literacy education should "teach and enhance the cognitive results of literacy," i.e. critical reflexivity (p. 107).  Critical reflexivity, as I understanding Buschman (2009), is the potential outcome of the distancing inherent in the written word, as described by Goody and McLuhan (1994).  But why is critical reflexivity important?  Why is that a valuable goal?

For Budd (2009), reflection, guided by an intention (or interest?) - i.e. reflection is about something or directed towards something in particular - is a process leading to understanding, to finding meaning.  This is in contrast to merely applying meaning (p. 134).  Reflection requires moving from a "natural attitude" to a "phenomenological attitude."  Budd (2009) says the "natural attitude" is "more readily intuited and is the commonplace mode of thought in our everyday lives" (p. 129).  The "phenomenological attitude," in contrast, "entails reflection on the natural attitude" and is an "examination of the world that the self and others live in" (p. 130).  I understand Budd (2009) to mean that reflection should involve making oneself in the world (in the physical, social, and informational environment?) an object of inquiry.  A key aspect of the "phenomenological attitude" is doubt, meaning the "suspension of judgment" (p. 135).  Further, the fruit of phenomenological reflection, as I understand Budd (2009), is the "growth of knowledge" (p. 135).

I appreciated Budd's (2009) definition of "attitude": "an overall manner of being or stance which orients our lived experience" (p. 139).  It caught my attention for the similarities with the way the word "attitude" is used John Dewey when describing the "scientific attitude" in Freedom and Culture.  He writes that the elements of the "scientific attitude" include the "willingness to hold belief in suspense," the "ability to doubt until evidence is obtained," the "willingness to go where evidence points instead of putting first a personally preferred conclusion," the "ability to hold ideas in solution and use them as hypotheses to be tested instead of dogmas to be asserted," and the "enjoyment of new fields for inquiry and of new problems" (Dewey, 1989, p. 114).  Dewey argued throughout his career that the "scientific attitude" should be applied in all areas of inquiry, not just in the natural sciences; he felt it could be used when approaching ethical, political, and social problems.  I wonder to what extent the "phenomenological attitude" and the "scientific attitude" are directed to the same (or similar) ends.

Information Literacy

So where does this leave us in terms of defining the object of inquiry, i.e. "information literacy"?  It actually still seems really muddy to me, and I think that is because there are a lot of different elements that do not necessarily coalesce into a nice whole.  Here are some of these elements:

Buschman (2009) suggests that information literacy is really not that different from other forms of literacy in that its end-in-view is the same as all other literacies, i.e. to enhance critical reflexivity.

Budd (2009) draws a contrast between information literacy as a set of skills, instrumental in nature - e.g. the ACRL Information Literacy Standards - and phenomenological cognitive action, which focuses on intentional and situated (and therefore historical?) "search for understanding" through a process of actively engaging with "complex discourse" (p. 33).  Does this phenomenological cognitive action program move us too far from the literacy part of information literacy?  Budd's (2009) framework seems geared towards cultivating the "phenomenological attitude" as opposed to literacy as it is understood by Buschman (2009).  However, Buschman (2009) does highlight how literacy moves a person toward or makes possible critical reflexivity.  So could we say a "phenomenological attitude" is build on the very skills that Budd (2009) critiques as instrumental?

Budd, J. (2009). Framing library instruction: A view from within and without. Chicago, IL: Association of College and Research Libraries.

Buschman, J. (2009). Information literacy, "new" literacies, and literacy. Library Quarterly, 79 (1), 95-118.

Dewey, J. (1989). Freedom and culture (1939).  Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

McLuhan, M. (1994). Understanding media: The extensions of man (1964). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.