The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy

The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy edited by David R. Olson and Nancy Torrance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, xxi+601 pp. Reviewed by Anna Dina L. Joaquin University of California, Los Angeles Traditionally, literacy has been defined as having the competence to read and write. However, in The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy, edited by Olson and Torrance, to be literate is argued to include not only having the basic skills of reading and writing, but also possessing competence with more specialized intel- lectual or academic language in different social contexts. Through compiling the work of leading scholars in literacy from various disciplines, including education, psychology, international development, history, anthropology, linguistics, sociol- ogy, and neuroscience, this volume also explores psychological, cognitive, and sociocultural aspects of literacy and transforms the definition from a narrowly defined competence to a complex ability. The Handbook is structured into five parts. Part I reflects on Literacy as a Scientific Subject. It serves as an introduction to the volume as it specifically deals with the “literacy episteme,” or the perspective that it is only within such a larger cultural-historical context that one can understand the activities and issues subsumed under the notion of literacy. Brockmeier and Olson propose that only within the literacy episteme can the social, intellectual, and cultural implications of writing appear as an area of theory and investigation. In Part II, Literacy and Language, the contributors deal with the complex relationship of reading and writing to more primary modes of communication – speaking and listening. They explore how the world’s major writing systems can be traced back to just three language systems, the evidence for the coevolution of written signs for language and numbers, and the similarities, unique properties, and advantages of each mode of communication. In addition, the contribution of Usha Goswami presents a review of studies in neuroscience that shows the relationship of reading to phonological processes in the brain, while Karl Magnus Petersson, Martin Ingvar, and Alexandra Reis demonstrate that literate adults process language in a different way than non-literates. Part III, Literacy and Literature, is concerned with the relationship of literacy to social conventions. Reading groups, reading and writing in school and specific subject areas, making lists, searching for information, writing recipes, reading a prayer book and other skills, are embedded in larger social and institutional contexts. Thus, learning to read and write also requires one to learn the appropriate social conventions within these contexts. Furthermore, reading and writing are not viewed as a private or solitary activity but as one that is social. For example, Elizabeth Issues in Applied Linguistics © 2009 Anna Dina L. Joaquin ISSN 1050-4273 Vol. 17 No. 2, 159-161