The other week, my review was published in VALBEC’s Fine Print Journal, reminding me that i promised to write more about some of the chapters in Lankshear & Knobel’s “Digital Literacies”. So..
Another chapter focusses on the global phenomenon that is e-Bay. i confess i know barely anything about e-bay. i am not an insider. The closest i’ve come to using it was in 2008 when the Reservoir literacy group went in to search for furniture, and one of the students tried to sell her hair extensions. That was an adventure!
In chapter 10, “Pay and Display – the digital literacies of online shoppers”, Julia Davies examines the multiple literacies involved and talks about:
- “insider-liness”,
- identity work,
- value construction, and
- the multi-modal narratives of objects.
Davies states that authenticity of narrative and characterisation count a lot in e-Bay product descriptions, as sellers work toward making powerful texts. If you want to sell your goods, and maintain positive relationships (the reliability rating!) it’s crucial to have:
- a consistent tone,
- apparent honesty and
- a direct approach.
“Literacy is about more than accuracy” (spelling mistakes don’t really matter if you have the other elements, she implies). Being an insider is important for developing relationships and understanding the cultural values – the language of this place. Davies conducted group interviews with insiders for her research, and concluded that the values of e-Bay include: authenticity, trust, reputation and the notion of community.
There are social practices around the trading, which could be called “new literacies”. As literacy practices contain social aspects, their meanings are shaped by socio-cultural matters. Not only this, but ”texts are socio-cultural constructs”, and ”literacy is primarily something people do”.
Davies shows there are plenty of literacy skills required to participate (and provides a good and useful list, on p235).
Objects and Desires
This idea i found interesting, that: buying and selling is not only about the intrinsic value of the object, but also about “taking part in an unfolding dramatic narrative”. People purchase “the symbolic value of goods and involvement in narrative”, and material goods become semantically significant through their social history. By purchasing an item, you become part of the ongoing narrative.
Investigating the d/Discourses of the environment, Davies notes there are socially agreed “ways of being” – e-bay is a “specific discursive space, comprising multimodal discourses”: if you’re a “real eBayer” then you follow these discursive practices. This includes the importance of ratings and feedback.
discourse of Community
Community is claimed as a primary value by the marketers behind the corporation, it’s included in set of values where e-Bay addresses people as “you”, implying shared ownership. There are systems in place to support these values, eg discussion boards.
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That’s all i’ve got for now on this chapter.
i wonder if it’ll help me next time i need to help a student sell their hair extensions.. ?
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(PS: yes, Davies really gets into that academic distinction between discourse and Discourse, as set up by James Gee (?), where small d discourse is the language patterns and social practices, and Capital D Discourse is the entire social space and all the embodied literacies.)
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photo credit: (creative commons at flickr) Thanks: danielbroche, and lciewf too.
