Literacy is traditionally the ability to read and write. Since the mid-twentieth century, the term is also used more broadly to encompass identifying, understanding, interpreting, creating, communicating, and using written information in ways that enable individuals to participate effectively in society and achieve goals.
The spread of literacy has been closely linked to the invention and spread of writing systems, the expansion of education, and technological change. Literacy rates have increased substantially worldwide since the mid-twentieth century, although significant disparities remain between countries, regions, and demographic groups, particularly with respect to gender and access to education. In 2022, the World Economic Forum estimated the global literacy rate at 87%, which was a substantial increase from 200 years ago, where it was at 12% in 1820.
Because literacy is fundamental to education, society economic participation, and civic life, it has been the subject of extensive interdisciplinary research, and its definition and measurement remain the subject of scholarly and policy debate.
Related concepts include functional literacy and multiliteracies, while specialized forms include digital literacy, media literacy, and health literacy.
Definition
The range of definitions of literacy used by NGOs, think tanks, and advocacy groups since the 1990s suggests that this shift in understanding from "discrete skill" to "social practice" is both ongoing and uneven. Some definitions remain fairly closely aligned with the traditional "ability to read and write" connotation, whereas others take a broader view: The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (USA) included "quantitative literacy" (numeracy) in its treatment of literacy. It defined literacy as "the ability to use printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential." It included three types of adult literacy: prose (e.g., a newspaper article), documents (e.g., a bus schedule), and quantitative literacy (e.g., the use of arithmetic operations in a product advertisement). In 2015, the United Nations Statistics Division defined the youth literacy rate as "the percentage of the population aged 15–24 years who can both read and write with understanding a short simple statement on everyday life." In 2016, the European Literacy Policy Network defined literacy as "the ability to read and write [...] in all media (print or electronic), including digital literacy." In 2018, UNESCO included "printed and written materials" and "varying contexts" in its definition of literacy, i.e., "the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts." In 2019, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in its Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) adult skills surveys, included "written texts" in its definition of literacy, i.e., "the ability to understand, evaluate, use and engage with written texts in order to participate in society, achieve one's goals, and develop one's knowledge and potential." Also, it treats numeracy and problem solving using technology as separate considerations. In 2021, Education Scotland and the National Literacy Trust in the UK included oral communication skills (listening and speaking) under the umbrella of literacy. As of 2021, the International Literacy Association uses "the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, compute, and communicate using visual, audible, and digital materials across disciplines and in any context." The expression "reading literacy" is used by the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), which has monitored international trends in reading achievement at the fourth grade level since 2001. Instead of defining "literacy", Sarah Gudschinsky described a person who is literate: "That person is literate who, in a language he speaks, can read with understanding anything he would have understood if it had been spoken to him; and can write so that it can be read, anything he can say".Gudschinsky, Sarah. (1976). Literacy: the Growing Influence of Linguists. The Hague: Mouton. Other organizations might include numeracy skills and technology skills separately but alongside literacy skills; still others emphasize the increasing involvement of computers and other digital technologies in communication that necessitates additional skills (e.g., interfacing with web browsers and word processing programs, organizing and altering the configuration of files, etc.). Some researchers define literacy as "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. In this view, humans in literate societies have sets of practices for producing and consuming writing, and they also have beliefs about these practices. Reading, in this view, is always reading something for some purpose; writing is always writing something for someone for some purpose. Beliefs about reading and writing and their value for society and for the individual always influence the ways literacy is taught, learned, and practiced.
Multiliteracy The concept of multiliteracies has gained currency, particularly in English Language Arts curricula, on the grounds that reading "is interactive and informative, and occurs in ever-increasingly technological settings where information is part of spatial, audio, and visual patterns (Rhodes & Robnolt, 2009)". Objections have been raised that this concept downplays the importance of reading instruction that focuses on "alphabetic representations". However, these are not mutually exclusive, as children can become proficient in word-reading while engaging with multiliteracies.
Other uses of the word "literacy" Word reading is fundamental for multiple forms of communication. Beginning in the 1940s, the term literacy has often been used to mean having knowledge or skill in a particular field, such as:
Disaster literacy – Proposed model for the ability to understand and use life-saving information, including the ability to respond and recover from disasters effectively
Linguistic literacy – Ability to read, write, understand, and speak any type of language
Mathematical literacy, also called , e.g., body language, pictures, maps, and video Musical literacy – Refers to culturally determined systems of knowledge in music and to musical abilities.p. 3. Csíkos, Csaba, and Gabriella Dohány. "Connections between music literacy and music-related background variables: An empirical investigation." Visions of Research in Music Education 28, no. 1 (2016): 2.
Classicist Eric Havelock developed a continuum for a culture's literacy, from pre-literate, through craft-literate, recitation-literate and script-literate to type-literate.
Functional illiteracy
Functional illiteracy relates to adults and has been defined in different ways: Inability to use reading, writing, and calculation skills for their own and their community's development. Inability to read well enough to manage daily living and employment tasks that require reading skills beyond a basic level. Inability to understand complex texts despite adequate schooling, language skills, elementary reading skills, age, and IQ.
Functional illiteracy is distinguished from primary illiteracy (i.e., the inability to read and write a short, simple statement concerning one's own everyday life) and learning difficulties (e.g., dyslexia). These categories have been contested—as has the concept of "illiteracy" itself—for being predicated on narrow assumptions, primarily derived from school-based contexts, about what counts as reading and writing (e.g., comprehending and following instructions).
Historical overview
Origins Script is thought to have developed independently at least five times in human history: in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus civilization, lowland Mesoamerica, and China.
Between 3500 BCE and 3000 BCE, in southern Mesopotamia, the ancient Sumerians invented writing. During this era, literacy was "a largely functional matter, propelled by the need to manage the new quantities of information and the new type of governance created by trade and large scale production". Early writing systems first emerged as a recording system in which people used tokens with impressed markings to manage trade and agricultural production. The token system served as a precursor to early cuneiform writing once people began recording information on clay tablets. Proto-Cuneiform texts exhibit not only numerical signs but also ideograms depicting objects being counted. Though the traditional view had been that cuneiform literacy was restricted to a class of scribes, assyriologists including Claus Wilcke and Dominique Charpin have argued that functional literacy was somewhat widespread by the Old Babylonian period. Nonetheless, professional scribes became central to law, finances, accounting, government, administration, medicine, magic, divination, literature, and prayers.
Egyptian hieroglyphs emerged between 3300 BCE and 3100 BCE; the iconography emphasized power among royals and other elites. The Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system was the first notation system to have phonetic values; these symbols are called phonograms.
Writing in lowland Mesoamerica was first used by the Olmec and Zapotec civilizations in 900–400 BCE. These civilizations used glyphic writing and bar-and-dot numerical notation systems for purposes related to royal iconography and calendar systems.
The earliest written notations in China date back to the Shang dynasty in 1200 BCE. These systematic notations, inscribed on bones, recorded sacrifices made, tributes received, and animals hunted, which were activities of the elite. These oracle-bone inscriptions were the early ancestors of modern Chinese script and contained logosyllabic script and numerals. By the time of the consolidation of the Chinese Empire during the Qin and Han dynasties (), written documents were central to the formation and policing of a hierarchical bureaucratic governance structure reinforced through law. Within this legal order, written records kept track of and controlled citizen movements, created records of misdeeds, and documented the actions and judgments of government officials.
Indus script is largely pictorial and has not yet been deciphered; as such, it is unknown whether it includes abstract signs. It is thought that they wrote from right to left and that the script is logographic. Because it has not been deciphered, linguists disagree on whether it is a complete and independent writing system; however, it is generally thought to be an independent writing system that emerged in the Harappa culture.
Existing evidence suggests that most early acts of literacy were, in some areas (such as Egypt), closely tied to power and chiefly used for management practices, and probably less than 1% of the population was literate, as it was confined to a very small group. Scholarship by others, such as Dominique Charpin and a project from the European Union, however, suggest that this was not the case in all ancient societies: both Charpin and the EU's emerging scholarship suggest that writing and literacy were far more widespread in Mesopotamia than scholars have previously thought.
Alphabetic writing According to social anthropologist Jack Goody, there are two interpretations regarding the origin of the alphabet. Many classical scholars, such as historian Ignace Gelb, credit the Ancient Greeks for creating the first alphabetic system () that used distinctive signs for consonants and vowels. Goody contests: