Whole language as signifier: Considering the semantic field of school literacy

Journal of Literacy Research, Mar 1998 by Dressman, Mark, McCarty, Laurie, Benson, Jonathan

This article examines the use of the term within the educational and national media and by the newspaper and interested parties in 1 college town. Data collected include articles in literacy journals; a search of 5 daily newspapers in the us and other periodicals and TV news; a search of i local newspaper; and interviews with 7o teachers, administrators, university faculty, and "concerned citizens" in a mid-sized city in the Southwestern us with a major public university. Using the "discourse-centered approach to culture" proposed by Sherzer (1987) as a revision of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, our interpretive analysis of the data argues that the disputes surrounding the term have as much to do with cultural, political, and economic issues confronting the us, and in particular the Southwest, as they do with any philosophical or professional conversation about the "best way" to teach children to read. The implication is that if literacy research is to retain both its legitimacy and its relevance within discussions about literacy, researchers need to become more open about their own cultural and political biases in the stands they take, and more aware of how those positions might be perceived and used by others and by the national media.

IN THIS STUDY WE ANALYZE THE VARIOUS WAYS that the term has been discursively used within educational journals and the national press; and more locally by citizens, the press, teachers, and administrators in one college town (which we call El Campo); and university faculty, administrators, and preservice teachers in a mid-sized university (which we call Algodon State) in the same city to empower their own practices and beliefs, not only about how to teach children to read and write, but about the function of literacy in children's and in communities' lives. Rather than take sides in the struggle to define the term (e.g., Edelsky, 199o; McKenna, Robinson, e'r Miller, 19goa, 199ob; Pearson, 1989; Watson, 1989), or argue for or against the instructional efficacy of the "amorphous set of principles" (Dressman, 1995, p. 231) to which the term generally refers, we have set as our task to relate the ways that the public and educators with a broad range of life experiences and beliefs about literacy have constructed the web of meanings, or "semantic field" (Sherzer, 1987), in which is a principal, if not the central, marker.

To emphasize to readers the "shiftiness" of the term across conversations, we have placed it within angle brackets to clarify our treatment of the term as a "signifier"- that is, as an object in itself, rather than as a term with a specific set of referents (or "signifieds") with which everyone who uses it more or less implicitly agrees. We understand, however, that readers who have followed the conversation about in literacy and education journals over the last 8 or so years may find this bracketing of the term affected and maybe a little too dramatic for its own good. Like the current president of the International Reading Association (IRA), Richard Vacca (1996), whose commentary on "the reading wars" in a recent issue of Reading Today pays attention in passing to the national media and state politics but steadfastly returns in the end to define the reality of the controversy as an honest disagreement over the best way to teach children to read, we suspect that the membership of the National Reading Conference (NRC) and other educators who read this journal may also be inclined to reference their understanding of the term to their own interests as researchers and teacher educators. Reading and writing inside a circle of professional conversation that defines/confines itself to the discourse of journals like Journal of Literacy Research, Reading Research Quarterly, Elementary School Journal, and The Reading Teacher, these readers may take it as their professional prerogative to regard the attention of those outside their circle - of the press, politicians, and "concerned citizens"' groups - to "the reading wars" as a passing diversion which distracts time and energy away from the "real issues" that have constructed the professional conversation about , where the "real issues" have historically centered around the research and development of the "best way" (and pending that, of better and better ways) to teach literacy.

Setting and Data Collection Techniques

To research the use of in the national and academic press, we have relied mainly on a review of the literature in academic literacy and elementary education journals from 1989 to 1995. We have also conducted a search for artides in several of the nation's largest daily newspapers - the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Atlanta Journal/Constitution, and the Boston Globe - from 199o, when first began to appear frequently in education articles, to 1995. Although it does not cover the conversation about in every corner of the United States, our search of the newspapers for these five major cities has been extensive, and, we believe, provides an illuminating frame for our principal narrative and analysis of as it is understood by multiple interested parties in the El Campo-Algodon State area.