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This Community's Literacy has been Sponsored by...: An Historical Case Study of the Literate Impact of the Boomtown Arsenal on the Community of Fieldview, OH from 1940-1960

Remley, R. Dirk
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1288720496

Abstract Details

2010, PHD, Kent State University, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English.
This dissertation is a case study of the literate impact that a particular workplace, which was operated by the U.S. government and a manufacturing contractor, had on the community in which it operated over a twenty-year period. The study recognizes intersections of spheres of literacy practices of work, home, school and community; and it considers Deborah Brandt’s (2001) conception of literacy sponsors, which she characterizes as “any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, and model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold, literacy—and gain advantage by it in some way” (p. 19). The study involves content analyses of over forty (40) archived documents from the workplace and interviews with eighteen (18) members of the community who lived in the area during the period of analysis, some of whom also worked at the site, to understand themes of literacy sponsorship that occurred. Findings include use of primarily visual, aural and experiential literacies to train line workers and supervisors to facilitate a quick transition for these employees to war industry workforce skills; a literacy hierarchy at the workplace, wherein employees at higher levels of the organization are expected to have more advanced print-linguistic literacy skills than workers at lower levels; a disconnection between print-linguistic literacies and practices based on that visual, aural, experiential training that contributed to a fatal accident at the workplace; and encouragement of print-linguistic literacy skills at home, at school and in the community. It concludes that, while the workplace used multi-modal literacy practices to facilitate a quick transition of labor skills that would benefit its production, it encouraged print-linguistic literacy skills generally. It is argued that education and training that include multimodal methods can enhance learning by appealing to a variety of literacies, re-enforcing each other as well as minimize the time required for retraining workers.
Brian Huot (Committee Chair)
Raymond Craig (Committee Member)
Pamela Takayoshi (Committee Member)
Robyn Parker (Committee Member)
Paul Haridakis (Committee Member)
223 p.
History; Literacy; Rhetoric
Literacy Sponsorship; Workplace Literacy; Community Literacy; Multimodality; Ecology of Literacy

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Remley, R. D. (2010). This Community's Literacy has been Sponsored by...: An Historical Case Study of the Literate Impact of the Boomtown Arsenal on the Community of Fieldview, OH from 1940-1960 [Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1288720496

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Remley, R.. This Community's Literacy has been Sponsored by...: An Historical Case Study of the Literate Impact of the Boomtown Arsenal on the Community of Fieldview, OH from 1940-1960. 2010. Kent State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1288720496.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Remley, R.. "This Community's Literacy has been Sponsored by...: An Historical Case Study of the Literate Impact of the Boomtown Arsenal on the Community of Fieldview, OH from 1940-1960." Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1288720496

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

kent1288720496
719
© 2010, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Kent State University and OhioLINK.