Texting literacies as social practices among older women
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Date
2014
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Stellenbosch University
Abstract
While many studies on mobile messaging have tended to focus on the communicative
practices of the urban young, this paper considers the role of mobile messaging (also called
texting) both as a social practice as well as a form of literacy enhancement among a group of
older working class women between the ages of 50 and 80 in a Cape Town township. The
paper examines how these women, with little or no formal education, acquire this form of
literacy, as well as the purposes for which they use texting. It also explores how this form of
late-modern communication is adding to four of their existing or developing literacies - text,
numeracy, visual and personal. The paper therefore adopts a multiliteracies approach within
the context of portable literacies.
Description
Keywords
Texting, Women, Multiliteracies, Cape Town, Citizenship, Social practice
Citation
Dyers, C. (2014). Texting literacies as social practices among older women. Per Linguam: A Journal for Language Learning, 30 (1): 2-17