Re-counting 'illiteracy
Literacy Skills in the Sociology of Social Inequality
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5609430 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Geoff Payne (0000-0002-0622-5388, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 219-240 |
| Publication date | 2006-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | British Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-1315 • E-ISSN: 1468-4446 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1468-4446.2006.00107.x |
| PMID | 16759193 |
| OpenAlex | W2023488415 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 14 |
Recent media reports have repeated claims that there are very large numbers of illiterate people in Britain, seven million adults being the most common figure. The moral panic this engendered has helped to justify educational initiatives and greater public spending on basic skills. However, a closer investigation of definitions and measurements of illiteracy in major national studies reveals the peculiarity of this social construction of illiteracy. Not least, it is argued that the numbers actually suffering significant literacy deficits are much lower than reported. Partly because British sociology has given literacy little attention (despite the advent of the 'New Literacy Studies'), official accounts of illiteracy remain unduly 'normative', seriously under-estimating cultural differences like gender, ethnicity and class. A new classification of low literacy skills is proposed, with the intention of demonstrating connections with structural accounts of social inequality and sociological theory. Low levels of literacy skill remain important because they are related to other forms of social inequality, even when the number of people disadvantaged in this way is much smaller than previously claimed
Disadvantaged · Ethnic group · Functional illiteracy · Inequality · Literacy · Normative · Pedagogy · Political science · Poverty · Social class · Social inequality · Social science · Sociology · Global Education and Multiculturalism · Global Educational Policies and Reforms · Law · Literacy, Media, and Education · Psychology
Education, economy, and society
Cross-cultural approaches to literacy
Local Literacies
Literacy and Development
Literacy and Literacies
Citizenship and Social Class
Inclusion or exclusion? Reflections on the evidence of declining racial disadvantage in the British labour market
What is the ‘high skills society’? Some reflections on current academic and policy debates in the UK
Survey Methods in Social Investigation
Limits of the Local
What's 'New' in New Literacy Studies? Critical Approaches to Literacy in Theory and Practice
The Trend of Class Differentials in Educational Opportunity in England and Wales
Generalization in Qualitative Research
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,11 |
| Citation span | 2008 - 2026 (19) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |