Literacy: Constructing Meaning through Philosophical Inquiry

Abstract

Introduction:  Recently, the perspective on literacy was changed from the view of considering literacy as basic skills of simple correspondence between sound and letter to the view of considering literacy as high level skills which consider the presenter’s intention and purpose, and the receptor’s background and need in a synthetic communicative context. Literacy is not the translating activity of letters to phonemes, phonemes to letters. Rather, literacy is considered to be very complicated, and a higher mental process in which writers construct meaning and readers reconstruct meaning (Rumelhart, 1981). Literacy also consists of the conventional reading and writing of skillful readers or writers, and the basic skills of oral language.