Aaron Beasley

Literacy is an activity that is both learned and acquired. As such, it implies a socially embedded level of implicit and explicit socialization and/or education into real or imagined communities of practice. Primary functions of literacy include the coding and decoding of texts. Texts, thought of broadly, include numerous genres, or socially recognized patterns of thought and communication, which themselves index socially embedded discourses for particular purposes. Though reading and writing are both powerful examples of literacy in action, literacy is multifaceted and continuously evolves to adapt to ever-changing human contexts.