Understanding Beyond Literacy

As children growing up in an age of online social media, we’ve simply grown up with every form of multimodal production that there is. We have witnessed first hand the amount of different productions we can take in at once. Instagram for example, is a media platform where you can share images and photos, one photo, depending on what it is, can tell you a lot about where a person is, what they’re doing and how they feel about what they're doing. You can also tell a lot by their caption, the text and even subtext of what they’ve written. You can also get a glimpse of their personality as well.

Although we have never looked at these as more than just a fun and enjoyable pass time, we have developed an understanding and skill that most people of our older generation had to be taught. We may not have known how to read the subtext or analyze our media, but in a world where our communication is heavily dependent on quick response texting, we’ve learned how to read emotions through what a person types, how they type it, what punctuation they choose to use, if any, and even what emoticons they use. We’ve figured out that “I’m fine” and “im fine.” mean two completely different things.

This doesn’t mean we can take a letter from our president, read the whole thing through and tell them who they were talking to, why they wrote it, and what the subtext is, unless we’re taught how to do that, but what we do now is the building blocks of getting to the point. Taking out and picking apart what vocabulary someone uses. Why use the word “Forlorn” instead of sad? The piece is a formal piece written to someone they respect and want respect from. Reading and writing analytically is a skill I believe everyone needs no matter what field of work you're in, or what your interests are. Our exposure to this kind of analytical reading and thinking through our own lives and personal experiences have paved the way towards our understanding in the future. Whether it be through school, work or through our hobbies.

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