Over the last year, I've done some other transliteracy-related stuff that might interest you:

• Further attempted to explain the usage of the word 'language' in the context of the model
• Asked for feedback on a draft of Redefining Transliteracy and stirred a cauldron of nastiness
• Demonstrated how badly the word 'medium' is misused in writings about transliteracy
• Put the "Blueberry Smoothie video" into a language model context to show a practical application
• Showed that the term Information Literacy is a dumb name for the good stuff done under that umbrella
• Really drove home that talking about media rather than language is distracting as hell
• Started a community bibliography of transliteracy-related links on reddit

Starting out, and despite my first tweet calling transliteracy bullshit, I was conciliatory and downright friendly. After putting some positive work out there and being ignored, I chose to approach the topic differently and talk about the controversy. The L&T librarians told me that I had gone too far, so before publishing Redefining Transliteracy I scaled back and was only semi-controversial (if you consider pedantically listing problems with a definition controversial).

Thing is, that post was probably the most popular of the whole lot. It was even the subject of an assignment for a Digital Media Communication class at Rider University (co-instructed by the truly inspirational John LeMasney). I hope most of the post's appeal was that it offered a compelling case for the adoption of a model for transliteracy that people find useful. I suspect that part of the appeal was the oh-no-you-didn't out-calling of the PART definition. So screw it, this stuff's been bugging me...

PART of the Problem

If the original "working definition" of transliteracy were claimed to be proprietary, it wouldn't be a big deal that my criticisms (let's call them "bug reports") and suggested improvements ('patches') have fallen on deaf ears. But the seminal First Monday paper on transliteracy refers to it as open source thinking. Professor Thomas calls transliteracy an open source concept in a well-circulated video:

We see it as an open source concept, and we offer it up for you to think about, develop, write about, go to Wikipedia and argue about the definition...

One immediate problem is that Wikipedia is a bad place to argue about the definition, since it's a place for things notable outside of itself, not original research or discussion leading to development of new ideas. While it might be acceptable to have a discussion of wording on an article's talk page to some extent, arguing about the definition using Wikipedia as the sounding board will generally lead to NOR, NPOV, and/or CoI issues. It's precisely why I haven't personally made any edits to the transliteracy page. If you don't already have your hat in the ring, I encourage you to edit on the language model's behalf.

Calling transliteracy open source is really quite hollow. Is the transliteracy blog really all the source? Where's a clear explanation of licensure for applicable source, besides a CC icon on the First Monday article? Where's the mechanism for reporting bugs and submitting patches? The fact of the matter is that there is very little open source about PART's work on transliteracy. It's a buzzword in a sea of buzzwords.

Call to Action

PART, if you do not wish to explicitly put the transliteracy concept under an open source or open creative license, release source material in the same manner, and ideally explain the mechanism by which the community can contribute to the project, you should publicly clarify that transliteracy is actually a proprietary concept.

Neither PART nor Libraries and Transliteracy have posted about the language model. Since I'm certain that prominent posters of both those blogs have read Redefining Transliteracy, it's curious to me that they haven't talked at all about the language model on their respective blogs. To me that's a lie of omission, or worse yet a faith-based lapse of intellectual honesty. After all, they've been presented with evidence to the contrary of their claims:

1. The things listed in the definition (signing, orality, handwriting, etc.) aren't established to be platforms, tools, or media either individually or as a group
2. The property of platforms, tools, and media that allows a literate person to go across or between them is not explained (and I contend, cannot be explained – a single unit is necessary for comparison)
3. All other criticisms aside, the order of the list is nonsensical, yet easy enough to change to chronological, alphabetical, or to delete altogether
4. Interaction is just a series of reading and writing acts as it applies to literacies, so including it is redundant
5. Talking about literacy as a function of platforms, tools, and media is akin to telling an auto mechanic over the phone that your car is yellow. Sure, color is an important attribute of a car, but the mechanic is more concerned with the make, model, and mechanical attributes of the vehicle. Literacy is about reading/writing stuff (ie. messages in languages), not where the stuff's written (ie. medium)

Unless there is some means of reconciliation to which I've not been made privy, believing transliteracy can operate under the PART definition requires faith: belief in the absence of [or in the face of contradictory] evidence. That's not a leap I'm willing to make. I've proposed a patch for a definition based instead on language (with thorough explanation of what language means in that context) that eliminates all 5 of those problems. Of course, if there were problems with the language model, I'd be interested in exploring those as well.

Maybe the silence on those blogs is because of personality conflicts with me. But that only goes so far; at some point pointing at me and saying I'm being arrogant or condescending just ends up being a distracting Argumentum ad hominem. If you think I'm an asshole and don't want to subject your readers to my douchitude, just don't mention me by name or link to my blog. I don't care – all I care about is furthering the discussion of transliteracy by putting ideas out there. If you're unwilling to tell your readers about ideas because they conflict with your pre-formed assumptions, who's the real asshole?

Given that turnabout is fair play, and that Lane specifically requested feedback, I have a definition-based question regarding his recent post:

What definition of medium is used in this context?

Mean Medium? Mode?

To me, a medium is a go-between over time and space used to convey information:

• An artist's medium might be oil on canvas
• A telegraph's medium is electricity over wire
• At the endpoint of a telegraph (or phone, or radio) is another medium — waves of sound over air

Medium can inform us about a lot of things. It can also confuse the issue. The reason I've pushed so hard for literacies to be defined as language skills is that many languages are relatively medium-agnostic. A letter written in ink on paper and one written in marker on posterboard are different in many ways, including both medium and aspects of visual language; but if the textual content of both is the same, the written language of both is equivalent. If that same text is on a computer screen or a television or a tattoo, the written language portion remains congruent.

In usage, people also tend to conflate medium with mode (semiotic modality). Modality is nearly a sensory means of categorization. Except it's not.

Whether medium or modality, questions arise:

• Is there any difference between watching a video on television or on YouTube? Is it the video that's different? The screen? Or is it the non-video stuff that surrounds a YouTube video?
• What about a watching a film on an old CRT and a new HD LCD? Different literacies?
• Isn't print literacy a visual literacy? If medium or mode is important, what is the necessity of the distinction?
• If someone reads text on a computer, is it print literacy or computer literacy or both? Why?
• If both the medium and the mode of spoken word and of music is the same, in a medium-or-mode-literacy world can they be considered the same literacy?

Languages

Language requires a medium. Communicating (over time and space) constitutes information being encoded into signs and symbols and sent over a channel, then decoded by the receiver(s) to be interpreted. Often, though, changing the channel has little effect on the integrity of the semiotics. McLuhan's stickiest mind-virus, "the medium is the message," is widely misunderstood, and is dead wrong much more often than it is right.

Since literacies are abilities for a sender to write and a receiver to read a message, rather than abilities of either party to grok a medium, it makes more sense from a literacy taxonomy standpoint to define and categorize literacies by linguistic properties rather than media.

Also, I think the literacy ecosystem would be a lot cleaner if we could agree that, whether "information literacy" is actually a literacy or literacies or not, its name is a really crappy mistake.

Otherwise, the diagram is fantastic. It's especially astute because it shows how literacies named and in common use can be grouped, even if those named literacies are themselves problematic. Literacy sucks indeed.

tl;dr

Information Literacy is a bad name for really good concepts. Let’s change the name (again!) to avoid confusion.

Plausible Fallacies

Rothman’s post starts with the two most common definitions of literacy:

• an ability to read and write
• knowledge of a specific subject

Nothing wrong there. However, it’s implied that for the purposes of transliteracy the second definition is the important one. I don’t see how one would reach that conclusion, given that the definition of transliteracy quoted later in the post starts “Transliteracy is the ability to read, write and interact...,” pointing to the first definition rather than the second. Transliteracy is about reading and writing (or their equivalents in other senses/contexts); working from some different assumption is a straw man.

The second problem is that Information Literacy is not a literacy per his own criteria. If a literacy is an ability to read and write or knowledge of a particular subject, where does “Information Literacy is the set of skills needed to find, retrieve, analyze, and use information”  fit? The common definitions of IL as critical skills are incompatible with the extended-but-conventional literacies of transliteracy. As such, comparing IL to transliteracy in such a manner has no bearing.

Implications

This framing of transliteracy as a subset of Information Literacy was implied by Lane Wilkinson’s post Transliteracy and Incommensurability, further implied by Rothman’s, and elaborated upon by Meredith Farkas, Lane Wilkinson, and others.

The second problem I mentioned — that Information Literacy isn’t a literacy — underlies the growing misconception. IL requires conventional literacies, but is not encompassing of them by definition. IL advocates apparently consider IL to be all-encompassing, but that’s a difficult-to-defend position. As such, the topics important to transliteracy, at least before last week, are distinct from IL.

The ensuing discussion has led to confusion over the practical boundaries of these terms. For instance, it isn’t clear how big transliteracy’s domain is per this newly-thin-air-pulled definition. In Why Transliteracy?, Lane insinuates transliteracy encompasses the Venn diagram of IL:

For me, transliteracy is the bridge between isolated spheres of information literacy,...

But on his personal blog, he writes:

I'm only using transliteracy as a catch-all for one particular slice of information literacy that I haven't seen before.

This leads me to wonder: is transliteracy an umbrella over Information Literacy and other literacies as most everyone seemed to agree prior to last week, or just some small sliver of IL?

Call to Deprecate

It’s neither, of course! Information Literacy is the notable exception to the transliteracy umbrella. I hinted at this in my Redefining Transliteracy post and a smidge on twitter; here are the charges against IL’s compatibility with transliteracy:

1. Transliteracy is an ability to read and write across things (which I frame as languages, while others prefer platforms, tools, and media for some unknown reason), whereas IL is an ability to find and critique information
2. From a reading/writing lens, or any lens for that matter, all literacies are information literacies. IL as a term is redundant and overly-broad
3. However an information literate entity interacts with information, that interaction is indirect, as information does not exist in any raw form. IL as a term is non-specific to the point of triviality

I cite these charges as more than just a reason not to compare Information Literacy and transliteracy directly; I also contend that it’s reason to deprecate Information Literacy and call its skills something else.

We’ve done this before. As a field of study, Library and Information Science effectively deprecated the term “Bibliographic Instruction” in favor of “Information Literacy.” The reasons behind this switch, it appears to me, were fourfold:

1. Proponents of Bibliographic Instruction became entrenched in out-moded concepts and techniques, and were unwilling to adapt BI to new technologies and methods
2. The word ‘Bibliographic’ itself implies books. Library-ish instruction is about much more than books
3. Information Literacy as a term focuses on the skills of the learner, whereas Bibliographic Instruction as a term was about teaching those skills
4. Information Literacy sounds really frickin’ good

If David Rothman is correct about anything, librarians are pedants of language. As such, clarity in the terminology we use for our core principles should be paramount. Additionally, re-re-coining this set of skills might cure what many seem to agree is cyclical entrenchment (per #1).

Here’s what I’m proposing: From some point in the near future on, people talking about the useful, respectable principles currently referred to erroneously as “Information Literacy” should instead use the term [insert term here]. Previous references to Bibliographic Instruction, Information Literacy, and other less-than-ideal terms should be considered [insert term here] by implication.

Conclusion

I think transliteracy and Information Literacy are like peanut butter and jelly. You can have one without the other, but they’re usually better together. If we can remove the myth that IL is a literacy of comparison (through deprecation or social agreement), we can more effectively work to develop a helpful instructional ecosystem for our patrons. We can look at transliteracy for all the different ways people encode and decode information, and Information Literacy for the critical skills associated with that information parsing.

One thing came to mind when thinking of examples: Brian Hulsey's Everyday Transliteracy video. It's known as the "blueberry smoothie" video to many; it shows how someone might communicate the same message (a blueberry smoothie recipe) using different websites and other forms of communication, and all in a concise, friendly manner.

Let's look at the examples through a linguistic lens.

Written Language

Most examples involve some form of written language. In many cases, though, communication via a particular website or other form requires subtle changes of dialect or language variant.

Email

In many ways, the language used in email is most like that of a written letter from perhaps a century ago. If a writer wished to ignore clear, concise business style, he or she could write an email of flowery prose or any other style you might otherwise encounter in written language. To me, the written language of an email is something of a baseline for comparison to other language usage.

Twitter

Linguistically, twitter is an interesting variant. Where you might devote a whole paragraph in an email for a stand-alone idea, the standard on twitter is for one tweet (at 140 characters or fewer) to do the same. As such, someone familiar with the letter/email baseline might develop a workflow for converting their verbose ideas to tweet-appropriate length:

1. Write a sentence or two. See that it's a number of characters over the limit
2. Shorten any URLs (more on that later) to preserve space
3. Use common abbreviations
4. Go over entire text looking for places to re-word, perhaps with chat/SMS lingo
5. Start removing things like pronouns and the vowels from certain words
6. Remove punctuation that isn't absolutely necessary
7. Begin to question whether the idea(s) might require multiple tweets

There's more to it, such as @replies, but the above workflow is the gist. It's interesting, anecdotally at least, that tweets and text messages diverge somewhat in linguistic usage, despite their similarity in imposed length restrictions. Whereas it's common to use instant message-type lingo (lol, brb, stfu, etc.) in an SMS message, it's at least somewhat less common on twitter. It's also more accepted to go over the character limit in text messaging, while quite impractical on twitter.

Facebook

Facebook doesn't formally impose stringent length limits like twitter. A savvy facebook user, however, knows that a long status update will get cut off at a certain length; and the cut off text is only viewable after clicking a "read more" link. This leads to a subtly different usage than twitter. Facebook users are more likely to use full words in full sentences.

The combination of "read more" links and quoting the first three or so words of comments on profile pages means that effective facebook users avoid "burying the lead." Such users communicate in pithy, concise posts, with their thesis statement within the first few words.

Facebook users may sometimes forgo leading personal pronouns since their name is displayed before their status. This is a less-likely occurrence on twitter, where users are represented by short usernames rather than their actual names.

Blog

Blogs are similar to emails from a written language perspective. There are nuances, of course, but it's long-form writing with the optional addition of hypertext elements, just like rich email.

Telephone (or face-to-face)

Talking on the phone obviously isn't written language. However, I think it's a great basic example of transliteracy. Brian, in the video, reads the necessary amount of orange juice aloud off the screen. This is him reading (decoding) written language and speaking (writing, encoding) the same message into oral language. This is a basic transliteracy that many of us possess that we often take for granted.

A Post-It Note

Similar to long-form written language. For a message longer than originally intended, someone writing a post-it message might employ chat lingo and abbreviations, or might start writing smaller near the end of the message.

Other Languages

URLs

URLs are a written language construct all their own. I learned what URLs looked like, how they worked, and the intricacies of their syntax and semantics from using them, rather than by any formal instruction. However, an internet user can gain a lot from being instructed in URLs.

For instance, Brian was 100% correct to shorten the URL for the recipe before posting it to twitter, as that's common practice. On the other hand, he didn't show how he used the full URL for the resource in facebook. It's knowing usage rules like these that make URLs an important language literacy.

Hypertext

Written language is a special subset of visual language. Hypertext is where, on the web, written language and what we usually consider visual language intersect. Hypertext elements have default styles per user agent stylesheets in the browser, making them visual elements. They are also semantically-defined markup elements per their SGML syntax. So bold text or italic text or a link or a heading appear different from text not wrapped with any markup; the elements' semantics precede their appearance.

A web user who doesn't know how to identify the common appearance and function of hypertext elements would be at a great disadvantage. Often the appearance of form elements, for instance, are derived from similar UI elements from the base operating system's toolkit. However, sites will often style or re-implement elements like buttons, so the essence of button-like symbols is a useful and transferable visual language skill.

Note that in the video, Gmail, twitter, facebook, and WordPress all have similar, but at least somewhat-different, representations of buttons, text fields, text areas, rich text boxes, etc. I think it's in the subtleties of hypertext visual language that it's most practical to use the language model instead of the platforms/tools/media model.

Visual Language

Each site uses layout conventions involving columns, proportion, color, contrast, and other precepts of visual language. How they are similar and different is a teachable thing for those we might instruct. Knowing basic visual language of websites is a transferable skill.

Besides site layout, another interesting form of visual language are symbols, often used as icons. The Noun Project is a cool resource for exploring this aspect of visual language.

Conclusion

I've written a lot about a little, and have still managed to leave out a lot! The literacies at play when doing seemingly-simple things are often complex and varied.

What I wanted to demonstrate more than anything else is that the language model allows us to talk about all the same transliteracy things, but in a way that actually gets to the core literacies.

I think these language literacies allow us to work from a common set of terminology. They let us proceed quicker to developing more-universal and more useful curricula for instruction.

A point to ponder: Brian's video, many (myself included) contend, is a wonderful example of transliteracy. It does not, however, focus in any way on the critical abilities normally associated with Information Literacy.

I owe a debt of gratitude to my former classmate Lane Wilkinson for the discussion about transliteracy we shared via email. More importantly for you, dear reader, is that Lane writes a blog called Sense and Reference with some of the best and most thought-provoking posts in the library world.

If you've followed the series of posts about transliteracy on this blog, perhaps you'd agree that I've approached the topic somewhat backwards:

1. First, I proposed a new definition as a solution to a problem I barely identified
2. Next, I put the proposed definition into context and clarified what I meant by some terminology
3. I then identified a number of issues with the current working definition that necessitate the redefinition

In this post I'd like to illustrate that the issues with the definition are causing problems: namely inconsistent communication among transliteracy researchers.

Definition Type

In his post, On defining transliteracy, Lane asserts that since transliteracy is a young term, it may not be appropriate now (or ever) to define transliteracy intensionally. I would absolutely agree with this notion if transliteracy were defined extensionally.

In the literature, the PART working definition is not only the current definition of record, but the basis for a functioning intensional unit. If we acknowledge that transliteracy is trans- plus literacy without making the necessary pre-assumptions of my previous posts, people still naturally use the word to mean "An ability to [do something] across [something]."

Do Something

The first blank, "the ability to [do something]" is much less contentious among transliteracy writers. The PART definition fills the blank with "read, write, and interact" while my suggestion instead goes for "encode and decode information." I think in both instances the intent is largely the same:

• A sensory ability that goes beyond basic perception. A literate being takes sensory input, recognizes certain patterns, signs, or symbols, and can then use that input cognitively
• The entity can often produce similar or identical patterns, signs, or symbols and transmit them over the same or similar channel
• This sensory ability applies to more than just the written word

My review of the literature confirms the agreement on these conditions of the first blank, despite the difference in wording I suggest.

Across Something

A review of the literature (which you're free to contribute to) shows us what transliterate entities are purportedly doing something across:

The agreement isn't total, but the clear majority of those discussing transliteracy have latched onto 'medium' as the unit that transliterate people are literate across. As such, the "precise necessary and sufficient conditions for being an instance of transliteracy" are asserted overwhelmingly by writers in the field to be met by being able to read, write, and interact across media.

But medium is used inconsistently with regard to scope, and often outside of the usage of any other field. As such, the condition-facilitating uncertainty that would otherwise be attached to an extensional 'transliteracy' is instead confusing the word 'medium'.

For instance, is facebook a medium? What about twitter? Is there a single "facebook literacy" or "twitteracy"? Is medium intended as it is in the field of Communications? Of Art? In a McLuhan sense of the word?

There is no agreement in the literature.

Placeholder

The word 'medium' is being used as a placeholder for an ill-defined unit of literacy. This placeholder isn't serving anyone because of the stark variation in usage.

I've made a case for language to be the unit instead, clarified what language means, and showed that it can function across all contemporary literacies. What else is necessary to get the discussion away from medium and toward language?

Preface

This is a long-ish essay about transliteracy that I've been editing for a few months now. I've asked for feedback from the Libraries and Transliteracy group [full disclosure: you can read the discussion here. I come off as arrogant, but luckily, not wrong] and Sue Thomas, and have based this version on their responses. Thank you to everyone who helped in getting this essay ready.

Introduction

The working definition of transliteracy, as defined by PART (Production and Research in Transliteracy):

Transliteracy is the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks.

This definition is both internally and externally inconsistent. The combination of problems requires a re-definition of the term such that transliteracy can be an effective interdisciplinary field of study.

Working Definition Inconsistencies

The definition mentions signing, orality, handwriting, and other things claimed to be platforms, tools, and media. Questions naturally emerge: Is handwriting a platform, tool, or medium? What about orality? It is unclear whether the things in the list are platforms, tools, or media at all, and if they are it is not clear in which category any one of them belongs.

A second problem follows. If handwriting is a medium and orality a tool (purely for example), how does one go across them? The trans- prefix of transliteracy means across or between; how does one go across not just different things, but different types of things?

Additionally, “signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks” is imprecise. There are ostensibly infinite platforms, tools, and media that fit into the framework. Listing a random, partial set of supposedly-included concepts is not how definitions are written.

The list also appears to assert a hierarchy, as if signing is somehow primitive compared to online social networks. Since the list is not purely alphabetical or chronological (TV comes before radio and film), it appears haphazard at best and literacy-elitist at worst.

It is also unclear why interaction is listed with reading and writing as it is redundant. Interaction is merely a series of reading and writing acts.

The biggest problem, and the one that leads to a solution, is that literacy is not the ability to read, write, and interact on a particular platform, tool, or medium. Literacy is the ability to encode and decode (since reading and writing are handwriting-centric activities) information in a particular language. Surely trans-literacy should then be

an ability to encode and decode information between or across languages.

This definition can be shortened to

an ability to communicate across languages

for most purposes. However, this iteration is less precise since the concept of communication often includes meaning, which is addressed later in this essay.

Defining Assumptions

The ability to encode and decode information in a particular language is not a definition for literacy in any known dictionary. Owing to its precision, it should be in the future.

The most common dictionary definition of literacy is concise: “The ability to read and write.” What is it that the literate person reads and writes? Information.

What does the literate person read and write information in? A passer-by on the street, asked if they were literate in the English language but not the Russian language, would be able to confidently answer yes or no to the query. Languages themselves are defined as systems for encoding and decoding information. Language as the base unit of literacy thus follows inductively from the vernacular and deductively from the definition of language.

Literacy purists may scoff at switching from reading/writing to decoding/encoding. There is a hearty debate as to whether understanding a spoken language constitutes a literacy. It is simple enough to agree that it does, with the caveat that generalizing makes the concept deviate slightly from the vernacular form.

Languages

Must an English-literate person learn English Braille? When someone first learns to understand spoken English, are they conclusively literate in English?

No. Very few people can be considered completely English literate. Spoken English, written English, and English Braille are all different languages. They are different systems of signs and symbols for encoding and decoding information. Surely they share similarities to the point that they can be considered in the same language family, but each facilitates communication using a different method. A person who understands spoken English is spoken English literate. Even to that point their literacy may not be comprehensive, as the English lexicon is huge and constantly-growing, and various spoken dialects of English exist that differ significantly.

Visual language works the same way. People can use different visual dialects with different visual grammars to communicate the same message. This is the terminology that artists and designers use to talk about their crafts. If transliteracy studies seeks to be interdisciplinary, using linguistic terminology is a great start.

The Medium is the Message[‘s Partner]

When someone communicates, they go through a process of encoding information into a language. The message travels on the medium to its destination. In this sense the medium is synonymous with the term ‘channel’ as it applies to the transmission model of communication.

For the purposes of talking about transliteracy, the important endpoints in a model of communication are where people either encode messages onto a medium or decode them from one. However, the medium itself only carries the message and is, as such, one of the two components of language.

Multiple messages can be encoded onto the same medium at the same time. A business memo can deliver in written language one message, while providing another via the typeface.

In a similar way, the same message can be delivered via two different media at the same time. A person shrugging while saying “I don’t know” illustrates this notion.

In both circumstances, two separate communications acts are being performed simultaneously, despite the sharing of a common component. Since language comprises both message and medium, a change in either changes the language and its encoding and decoding processes.

Is Transliteracy Meaning-less?

Some models of communication put emphasis on the concept of meaning. The sender intends to attach a certain meaning to the message and the receiver derives their own meaning upon decoding the message. Often these meanings do not agree. The meaning-making process occurs outside of the encoding/decoding process, however.

This appears to be a cold notion, that meaning is outside the scope of transliteracy. However, it meshes well with the original divide between transliteration and translation. A person who transliterates is able to do a literal, meaning-independent task. A person who translates takes meaning into account such that the completed translation is not a literal comparison to the original work.

It is worth noting, since the examples provided are placed in the context of the transmission model of communication, that the transmission model is often criticized for not explicitly addressing meaning or action. In both cases, such criticisms are unwarranted. Since meaning-making occurs before the encoding process or after the decoding process, a separate meaning-making process can be attached to a sender or receiver where applicable. Similarly, action is often a separate communication act. Communication acts of a common thread may be daisy-chained, ran parallel, and branched using the components of the model to illustrate concurrency and causes and effects.

Reconciliation

It is also worth noting that a general definition of literacy, and by relation transliteracy, should be as compatible with other definitions of both general and specific nature as possible. This facilitates interdisciplinary discussion and a useful pedagogical framework. For instance, a commonly-cited definition like

[the] ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society.

as set forth by UNESCO, should be reconcilable with the general notion of the base literacy definition used to define transliteracy. “The ability to communicate in a particular language,” to use the short form, has no prima facie incompatibilities. The UN definition is broad. Likely this is by perceived necessity to include areas where bilingualism is prevalent. It also does not explicitly group literacy competencies by language, though this characteristic does not make the definitions incompatible since “varying contexts” is suitably ambiguous.

As previously explained, the vernacular form of literacy is text-centric. This is a necessary consideration for a body that uses its internal definition to measure worldwide literacy rates. However, the concept limits the perception of language to a particular sensory set of signs and symbols when such a distinction is unnecessary and potentially-biased. The UN, as such, may rank areas with verbal or other communicative emphases lower than print-prevalent areas.

All literacies should be treated equally. The printed word should not be considered superior by fiat. The ability for a person to communicate effectively in common cultural contexts to an extent that makes them a functional member of society does not necessarily mean having native written language literacy. In many cultures illiteracy in the area’s official written language may make it difficult for a person to function in society. In other cultures it may not. This functional distinction is a necessary lens for measuring base literacy of a country, region, or person.

Other Literacies

Media Literacy, Multimedia Literacy, Computer Literacy, Digital Literacy, and many others fail the test of being language-based. Thankfully, the OED steps up to offer a solution:

2. competence or knowledge in a specified area

Many of these literacies, as such, can continue to be defined as they are without hurting anything. Without too much effort, though, the situation can improve: by making all of these literacies plural.

Computer literacies would then be all the language (the cool, system-for-transferring-information kind) abilities involved with using computers. Wine literacies would be the language skills necessary for the theory and practice of Oenology. This simple semantic change makes the second definition of literacy superfluous and makes the umbrella term transliteracy easier to wrap around existing literacy models.

Finally, the term “Information Literacy” must die. Since all literacies are information literacies, the plural form “Information Literacies” would encompass the entire namespace of knowledge. Information Literacy cannot be a single literacy, either. Information itself is not a language. Information must be encoded into useful forms via language for people or other things to use it.

The concepts presently under the umbrella of Information Literacy are valid and useful. The practice of teaching the skills and abilities currently associated with Information Literacy should continue. Those skills and abilities should just be called something that makes sense. Information Literacy (or Literacies) is not the right term.

So What?

If Transliteracy is to be an academically-respectable field of study, it needs precise, discipline-compatible language for its core concepts.

For more information on the language model of transliteracy, see the blog posts On Transliteracy and Speaking The Same Language.

Please comment on this post regardless of if you agree or disagree. Let’s talk about this. If you feel strongly enough, put the word transliteracy in a tweet; the people most involved with the concept will hear you.

Thank you.

So, I'd like to be a bit less formal and start from the top.

Information

The Universe is made up of information. This is particularly interesting in the context of concepts like simulated reality. A computer simulating a Universe to as detailed an extent as the Universe we inhabit would have to account for expressing physical information via digital physics and perhaps would require artificial intelligences for simulated inhabitants.

What's important here is that the universe is made up of information. That information can then be expressed in ways beyond the literals of existence.

Perception

Information wouldn't matter much without senses. We as living beings have an ability to perceive reality via our senses. We then do various stuff with this information.

Communication

Communication is "...a process of transferring information from one entity to another." While it's interesting to think of objects like stars communicating with us their message of very bright light from very far away, I think communication requires intention on the sender's part.

A plant of a certain color or emitting a certain scent may be communicating to animals that they do or do not wish to be eaten, but a rock of a certain color probably didn't go through any sort of process to convey a message to any recipient.

Language

When I think of "raw data," I visually see a wall of numbers in Notepad on my computer. This, however, is far from raw data (data being used interchangeably with information here). How do we fathom what the pure state of information really is? It's always expressed in some manner.

The method of expression is language. Languages are systems for encoding and decoding information.

Mixed Signals

As Sue points out, I made no mention of body language in my previous post. She is absolutely correct, and has provided an excellent example of how to effectively wrestle with my proposed redefinition of transliteracy.

Two people engaging in a face-to-face conversation may use three or more different languages. They'd speak verbally, they may gesture or use other body language, and may have intentionally-or-not decided to express information through scent.

What if this face-to-face conversation was flirtatious? The information expressed verbally might be playful and flattering. The body language could be expressed as a visual language of lines, shapes, colors, etc. The olfactory language could be pleasing found scents applied to the body or pheromones secreted involuntarily. There could even be touching. But I'm not writing a romance novel here, so let's leave this example and move elsewhere.

Someone transliterate in the languages of a face-to-face conversation is able to decode the information encoded and expressed by the sender, then encode and express that information via language (though not necessarily the same language[s] used by the other party). Since the information from one language may conflict with another, it's important to be able to encode and decode the information in order to interpret it. If I say 'yes' verbally but shake my head to indicate 'no,' what am I really communicating? This is a basic example of transliteracy.

Language, Not Language

I'm using language explicitly here as systems of encoding and decoding information. Dr. Thomas mentioned other types of languages as examples that aren't included in that sense. Cultural Language and Sensory Language as I'm interpreting them (though, to be honest, I don't really understand them) are sets of terminology within a language. This would be like the 6th definition in Princeton's wordnet listing for language.

If we operate from different definitions of language this communication falls apart, so I'd like to emphasize that I don't mean language in the sense of terminology.

Units

I contend language is the right unit to use for literacy because it plays well with original definitions of literacy and transliteracy. Since the terminological taxonomy of language is ironically poorly-defined, this is not as of yet an ideal solution.

However, it has an advantage over the current working definition of transliteracy that the base unit of language can be compared and contrasted. Since media, tools, and platforms are disparate things, you cannot express insights across them, which is the entire point of the trans- prefix attached to the word. By having one unit, whether you choose to call it language or 'medium' or 'channel' or 'kwyjibo,' you can then make comparisons.

You can see the comparative ability in the face-to-face conversation example. Different languages are used to express information; sometimes different information in different ways. One person, instead of blushing, could just say "I'm embarrassed." What strengths and weaknesses do these languages have over one another for expressing information?

More importantly for the sake of argument - how would you comparatively express face-to-face conversation in the context of media, tools, and platforms?

Free Riders

By using language as the base unit, we are also afforded the terminology and theory of linguistics to express and grapple with the communicative concepts. This provides us with an interdisciplinary framework for discussing the implications of transliteracy.

It's also useful for applying transliteracy in a pedagogical sense. If we want to ensure a learner is equipped to use flickr, we just need to teach them the necessary underlying languages - be they written, visual, interface, or otherwise.

Homework

I encourage you to look at some of the great examples of transliteracy on the transliteracy.com site and consider which languages are at work in each communication. Moreover, consider how you would then teach the necessary literacies such that others could communicate in the same manner.

I hope this post provides a little more clarity into what I mean by language and why it's a good choice for a base unit of transliteracy. Thank you.

Transliteracy defined as a cross-media ability misuses the word literacy, since the base competency of literacy is language rather than medium.

Background

First - I regret my approach to the subject of transliteracy via twitter. As librarianbyday claimed, my initial criticisms were vague and perhaps unjust. Before proceeding I would first like to apologize if my meanings were unclear or personally hurtful. That was not my intention.

I insinuated transliteracy was “a bullshit made-up term for the same old stuff.“ This isn’t entirely or necessarily my stance, given that my qualms with transliteracy stem from a poor common definition of literacy. The application of the term literacy across media, as such, was hasty since I myself had not defined literacy as pertinent to my argument. I apologize for this basic error.

Before proceeding to the meat-and-potatoes of my argument I would like to take this opportunity to point any readers to two blogs which I quite admire:

• Libraries and Transliteracy - a collective effort from which I personally have gleaned insights and with which I bear no ill judgment
• Agnostic, Maybe - a brave blog of contemporary opinions with which I frequently disagree (sometimes at a basic level) but with an author whose acceptance of alternate viewpoints I truly admire

You can view the twitter meta-discussion to see where such arguments began, though they are conveyed at basic level. What follows is more rigid in interpretation and as such the twitter discussion merely serves as metadata (ha!) to the real deconstruction of transliteracy as a term and definition.

First, define your terms

Or more correctly, "Define your terms, you will permit me again to say, or we shall never understand one another” as Voltaire wrote in Dictionnaire philosophique. It is in the transliteracy.com 'working' definition of transliteracy that vague terminology originates apropos to this discussion.

Transliteracy is the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks.

This definition is hasty because transliteracy is not an arbitrarily-coined word. As the authors of Transliteracy: Crossing Divides point out, transliteracy is an existing term stemming from the verb ‘to transliterate.’ Both they and Sue Thomas in her report on the Transliteracies conference quickly jump from talking about language to mentioning media, tools, and platforms.

Transliteration

Transliteracy in its original definition is well-defined and valid. It is the prefix trans- added to the word literacy, which has a strong denotation. Literacy here is the ability to read (and often write) in a given language. The test of whether one is literate as such is language-dependent. In practice, transliteracy would then be the ability to transliterate - commonly referring to a process by which one language with different character-to-phone rules is converted to another.

It's important to treat the "same language" with different sensory and communicative characteristics as a different language. For instance, the “English language” can be represented via touch in braille. Someone who can interpret input (interpret being defined loosely here) in the form of raised dots is said to be literate in that given language’s Braille. English in Braille and common written English are not a 1:1 comparison; since Braille characters are larger than written characters for tactile purposes, contractions unfamiliar to readers of written English are used. While fluency in ‘English’ is implicit to one literate in English Braille, the change of format necessitates many real differences and presents real barriers that make these different language literacies and fluencies.

Language

You may have noticed that I’m playing faster and looser with the word language than you may be accustomed. Straight from Wikipedia:

A language is a system of signs (indices, icons, symbols) for encoding and decoding information.

In the introductory paragraphs of that same article, distinction is made between spoken language and written language. I think this distinction is necessary, and grant that a permeable umbrella term “language family” can be used to refer both to historically-linked different languages of written or verbal form, but also to contemporary languages that are closely related across those barriers. For the purposes of this article I’d like to grant that spoken English, written English, English Braille, American Sign Language (to a less-clear extent), and others are part of the English language family. As a further look at language families will attest, there is a certain lack of taxonomic clarity to how language families are described.

Visual Language

Now we’re getting somewhere! Visual language has structural units, like any other language. Via Wikipedia:

Its structural units include line, shape, color, form, motion, texture, pattern, direction, orientation, scale, angle, space and proportion.

I contend that medium, if not directly a part of this list, is at least strongly intertwined with the other structural units. As such, medium is most connected to the visual language of a piece compared to other languages.

This is an important distinction because there is so much communicative variation within and across media. An LCD screen can be used for almost anything, and a huge range of information and emotion can be expressed as sound over air.

There is a dependency, as such, on the visual language for expressive purposes. Two artists could express the same concept with different visual languages in much the same way that a fluid column of text on a computer screen could communicate the same information as a fixed column on a printout. Visual literacy, then, is the ability to decode and encode information from visual language. Visual fluency is the ability to derive meaning from that visual information.

Interface Language

The signs, symbols, analogies, literals, and physical attributes of a given piece as they convey information pertaining to the usage of said piece.

In many instances the interface is rather passive. A painting on a wall is only interacted with in the sense that it is viewed. One could make the case that an ornate frame informs the user not to touch the piece. Not touching is an interaction vector.

A book’s binding, in conjunction with elements of written and visual language, inform the user on the method of turning pages. By interface convention, a book user may also naturally assume to find certain interface elements in commonly-found places: jacket, title page, verso, contents, index, etc.

A computer has a literal, physical interface language at the first layer. An ‘on’ button, a keyboard in a likely-familiar layout, a pointing device of some sort.

The on-screen interface prior to the GUI was essentially a programming language in the form of shell scripting.

Different GUIs have different interface languages. While Mac, Windows, and the common Linux windowing systems are the stand-out examples of this principle, it’s worth noting that different versions of an OS often contain striking differences in interface language.

Languages evolve.

The web is a curious sea of interface languages. At the very core, it’s a “frame story” of interfaces, in that the browser’s cues aren’t necessarily those of the base OS’s GUI (that was fun to write, btw). The ever-changing elements of hypertext are another layer on top of that. Then, site-and-or-page-specific styling via CSS enable a web designer (that designation used loosely here) to change the interface language much further.

Platforms and Tools

I’ve already placed media in the spectrum of language scopes where I believe it fits - that of visual language (or perhaps aural). Platforms and tools can be found much higher up the chain.

A platform - let’s use Windows XP as an example - is a combination of many languages, some not elaborated upon in this article. A user of the platform must learn certain interface language elements, many of which are composed of visual language elements that the user should also likely know. The interface is loaded with written language and various sound-based languages. What’s so interesting about this from a ‘transliteracy’ perspective is that there are degrees of iteration, inclusivity, and exclusivity to the necessary competencies.

A tool could really be anything, but let’s use Facebook as an example. It fulfills the laughable “digital social network” component of the original re-definition, which is a plus in my book. Sure, Facebook has very much become a platform as of recent, but since tools and platforms fall out of what I’m asserting is the scope of transliteracy’s definition, let’s just move forward with Facebook as a tool. It’s part of the previously-explained frame story. It can use its own interface language and interchange written languages, but abides by common web interface language conventions in order to promote usability.

The important part here is that platforms and tools are combinations of languages, while a medium is only part of a language.

Proposed Re-Re-Definition

Transliteracy is the ability to encode and decode information between or across languages.

I believe this definition meshes well with the original definition and works with the contemporary work done under the umbrella of transliteracy. It is perhaps necessary to better define the different types of languages and create a more-holistic model for their interaction, though.

A Caveat on Usage

Sorry Andy, I’m going to pick on your latest post a little bit. On his blog, he wrote regarding the future of libraries:

Personally, in the future, I think that the main focus of librarianship will rest on two areas: transliteracy and customer service. For me, transliteracy is the best umbrella concept to the multi-disciplinary knowledges that the future of information will require. With information storage occurring in a multiple of mediums (audio, video, and written recordings, for example), the ability to navigate the formats will become a necessity.

Personally, in the present, this doesn’t mean much. It’s essentially saying “I think the main focus of librarianship in the future will be knowledge.”

Without specificity when using the term (ie. “This is apropos to transliteracy because the user must be able to go across these specific languages in order to interpret the end-goal information”), it could conceivably refer to the entirety of human perception. That’s a huge umbrella that contains the past, present, and future of libraries, as well as the rest of the perceived and readily-perceptible universe.

Great care should be taken to convey scope as it pertains to transliteracy.

Further (Wikipedia) Reading

I’m no linguist, psychologist, philosopher, or artist. I know I’ve left out certain context for brevity (ha!) and have undoubtedly made unintentional mistakes. There’s been a ton of work that applies to this one term, of which I personally have only skimmed the surface. Here is a list of Wikipedia articles that I think will be useful for yours and my further study:

• Literacy
• Alphabet
• American Sign Language
• Multimedia Literacy
• Language interpretation
• Language of thought
• Cognitive Linguistics
• Psycholinguistics
• Information Theory
• Linguistic Relativity
• Aesthetic Interpretation
• Oral Interpretation
• Technacy
• Computer Literacy
• Critical Literacy
• Media Literacy
• Meaning (Philosophy of Language)
• Philosophy of Language
• Braille
• Writing System
• Braille Literacy
• Interface
• Alan Kay
• Marshall McLuhan
• Language
• Language Family