The scope of this review must be restricted in several ways. First the focus is on reading specifically. Although reading is but a component of the language activities called literacy, it must certainly be at the heart of whatever concept of literacy is adopted (Venezky, Wagner and Ciliberti 1990).

There has emerged, over the last decade or so, a fairly cohesive body of work centered around a socio-cultural approach to literacy (e.g., Cazden 1988, Cook-Gumperz 1986, Gee 1990, Graff 1987, Heath 1983, Pattison 1982, Scollon and Scollon 1981, Street 1984). This work argues that the traditional view of literacy as a private mental possession which can be quantified and measured in terms of discrete decontextualized skills is deeply inadequate. To see why this is so, consider the following simple argument centered around the notion of ‘reading” (Gee 1989).

Recent research on educational contexts of literacy has focused primarily on a set of central issues and debates: definitions of literacy; basic cognitive, social, and linguistic processes involved in reading and writing; the efficiency and value of various pedagogical approaches and instructional materials; assessment of reading and writing achievement; and access to literacy learning opportunities for students outside the dominant culture and language. These debates and issues have been discussed in previous reviews of research on literacy in the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (Grabe 1990, Kaplan, et al. 1984, Srivastava 1990), in recent handbooks of research (e.g., Barr, et al. 1991, Flood, et al. 1991, Pearson, et al. 1984), in major educational research journals (e.g., Applebee 1984, Clifford 1984, Dole, et al. 1991, Erickson 1984), in reviews commissioned by professional education and research organizations (e.g., Adams 1990, Anderson, et al. 1985, Goodman, et al. 1988, Hillocks 1986), and in other articles in this volume.

The past decade has seen increasing acceptance of the perspective that there can be no disinterested, objective, and value-free definition of literacy: The way literacy is viewed and taught is always and inevitably ideological. All theories of literacy and all literacy pedagogies are framed in systems of values and beliefs which imply particular views of the social order and use literacy to position people socially. Even those views which paint literacy as a neutral, objectively definable set of skills are in fact rooted in a particular ideological perspective, and it is precisely because they obscure this orientation that they are most insidious. In fact, as Fairclough (1989) argues, one of the primary mechanisms of social control is the “naturalization” of institutional practices which legitimize and perpetuate existing power relations.

The 1980s experienced a worldwide increase in interest in adult literacy, culminating in the designation of 1990 as International Literacy Year by the United Nations, and the setting of a variety of international and national goals for the reduction or eradication of adult illiteracy by the year 2000. While attention to adult illiteracy resembles a pendulum, a number of factors have contributed to the current heightened awareness of this problem as well as interest in working toward its solution.

Literacy studies can frequently be characterized as programmatic and/or evaluative: They focus on the need for literacy programs, on the social consequences of illiteracy, on ways in which the literacy level of a particular population group can be increased, or on the results of various programs already implemented. A glance at a bibliographic resource such as Hladczuk, et al. (1989) reveals that the majority of entries are devoted to “literacy campaigns” and “literacy programs,” “computers and literacy,” “functional literacy,” “history of literacy,” and “libraries and literacy.” Before the 1980s, questions of a linguistic nature were infrequently addressed because emphasis was traditionally placed on the psychological aspects of literacy (Bendor-Samuel 1984:5).

During the past decade literacy has gradually become a major concern throughout Europe. Though there is a great diversity in both the distribution and degree of (il)literacy in different countries, there has been an increasing general awareness of the numbers of illiterates and the consequences of being illiterate for personal life. Apart from local literacy campaigns, in 1984 the European Community initiated a broader program to combat illiteracy in member countries. The emphasis of the integrated policy was on prevention, stressing optimal access to literacy education, including opportunities for preschool education. Gradually, attention was also paid to the reduction of illiteracy among adults. Initiatives began to focus on the functional dimensions of, and the personal needs for, literacy. It was also acknowledged that literacy programs should recognize the different realities of diverse groups of learners.

This discussion will focus upon English literacy research which draws upon systemic functional linguistic theory. Over the last ten to fifteen years, a significant number of applied linguists and language educators have emerged in Australia who use systemic functional linguistic theory to address a wide range of research questions. Their effort has been stimulated by the scholarly leadership of Halliday (e.g., 1985a), who took up the Chair of Linguistics at Sydney University in the late 1970s, as well as that of colleagues and former students of his, including Hasan (e.g., Halliday and Hasan 1985) and Martin (e.g., 1985a). The group of scholars who have emerged have contributed to the development of a rich tradition of research and teaching in English literacy in both first and second language contexts. Such a tradition offers the prospect of an educational linguistics of value both to researchers and teachers. More than one tradition of linguistic research might well contribute to the development of an educational linguistics. However, it is the particular claims and contributions of systemic functional linguistic theory that are argued for here.

This chapter concerns adult literacy issues in Canada—adults being defined as people fifteen years or older and out of school—and focuses primarily on adults who are not (or are barely) literate in any language. Until the mid-1980s, educational support for adults who wished to develop or improve their literacy skills up to about the grade eight level was almost entirely a charitable endeavor. People with low literacy skills were perceived to be a marginal group consisting of elderly people who had not had the chance to go to school, people with disabilities who were considered to be untrainable, certain immigrant populations, and people who had failed in the school system through some individual weakness. In 1985, in the midst of national concerns about the productivity of the country's labor force, the government of Ontario launched a program of funding for three explicit purposes: 1) to assist literacy programs for adult learners, 2) to support literacy organizations, and 3) to fund a small amount of community based research on adult literacy. The federal government followed suit in 1986, establishing the National Literacy Secretariat in the Department of the Secretary of State for Canada.

In recent years the term “literacy” has rapidly expanded its space in the lexicon. Only a short time ago it was an abstract and rarely used noun, usually referring to the state of communities or societies. It was not in the vocabulary of American schooling, along with reading, writing, language arts, or English. The related terms literate and illiterate, if applied to individuals, were limited to adults and to either highly refined or very rudimentary knowledge of written language. Now the word literacy has been extended on the American scene to express knowledge of other domains in such phrases as computer literacy and scientific literacy, and it is even being pluralized as literacies. It is also being used more and more, along with literate (but not illiterate), as an over-arching term for knowledge and activities that were until recently designated separately as reading and writing in discussions of theory, research, and practice. This use of the term reflects a more unified, holistic view of reading and writing as linguistic enterprises situated in social and intellectual contexts, a view that has been expanding with marked consequences.

Literacy in South America must be understood against the backdrop of the linguistic diversity there. Of the fourteen nations and territories of South America, only Uruguay and the Falkland Islands are monolingual, in Spanish and English respectively. Every other country encompasses from 7 to 200 languages within its borders.

The history of literacy in the Maghreb (Arabic, “west”) spans several millennia. Strategically located in the Northwest of Africa and on the Southern shores of the Mediterranean, the Maghreb has been a crossroads where several civilizations mingled and interacted: The Greeks, the Phonecians, the Romans, the Arabs, and more recently the Turks and the Western Europeans have all affected, to varying degrees, the history, culture, language, and literacy of the region (Al-khatib-Boujibar 1984).

The ability to communicate, to understand a commonly available body of facts and reach a consensus for policy development and action depends on a literate society. Those who cannot read are unable to participate in the democratic process. They impose a growing social and economic burden on the literate (ANPA 1989:1).

A discourse on literacy in Southern Africa to be meaningful should answer the following questions: What is the status of languages and literacy in the countries of Southern Africa? What policies of literacy promotion are being pursued, and with what policy justifications and results? What is the nature of the emerging symbioses among spoken languages, and among literacies in the mother tongues, national or official languages, and the metropolitan languages?

Some of the ways in which the range of discourse characteristics in Somali was extended due to the addition of written registers in 1973 have been examined. These discourse characteristics were operationalized by five major dimensions of variation in which each dimension represents a set of co-occurring linguistic features. With respect to three of these dimensions, the addition of written registers greatly extended the linguistic patterns previously in use: structural elaboration features along Dimension 1, lexical elaboration features along Dimension 2, and directive interaction features along Dimension 5.

Two ideas emerge very clearly from a reading of the 15 articles that constitute this volume of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics: The first idea emerges from virtually all of the articles herein included—the notion of what constitutes literacy has changed rather dramatically over the past decade. The second idea derives largely from the set of articles which examine literacy practices in various parts of the world—while there is a clearer understanding of what constitutes literacy, the implementation of literacy dissemination programs, even in the most advanced countries (let alone in the third world) is beset with possibly insolvable problems.