Considering semiotic ideologies in the design of literacy learning software for multilingual youth and adults in rural South Africa
Abstract
Recently, interest has grown in understanding how sociocultural processes inform the design and use of learning technologies. In 2006, I managed the design and piloting of a multilingual literacy learning software for youth and adults in rural South Africa. Drawing from observations of and informal interviews with twenty-six learners who piloted the software, I propose that the software provided the learners with opportunities to reassess not only important self-understandings as learners of basic literacy skills, but also speakers of certain languages and in general, certain kinds of people. The findings, analyzed within the framework of semiotic ideology, support a broader proposition that literacy programs, and the technologies used in them, can serve as forcible mediators of people's understandings of what languages, signs and sociocultural identifications are.
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Published: 24 June 2008
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