Minding metaphors

Rethinking the ecology of written language

Abstract

The field of reading and literacy studies has undergone large changes in the past three decades. A branch referred to as New Literacy Studies has established itself alongside the traditional school of psychological reading research, and in general there has been a continuous effort to bring together individual and social aspects of literacy. The approach of the present article is rooted in the rhetoric of science and explores metaphorical barriers to cross-disciplinary understanding. More specifically, it revisits David Barton's metaphorical understanding of literacy as an ecology of written language, originally intended to draw the social and the psychological together. The article discusses the marginalisation of the individual in Social Turn theories in general and in the ecology framework in particular. An understanding of involvement and eventness is suggested that makes room for the individual and thus also improves the precision of the framework. Rethinking ecology along this line of thought might enrich the ecology metaphor in the study of reading and literacy in a way that makes it meaningful from a psychological perspective.