SHI Ruojin
Student ID: 52290973
New Literacies and Popular Culture: A Self Reflection
This is the first time for me to write something with looking through my life.
Speak of new literacies and popular culture, I have so many things to share, but it is
still difficult to start. After the brainstorming, I decided to start my reflection by
explain what is “new literacies” and “popular culture”.
As in Wikipedia, which itself is a kind of “new literacy”, this term refers to
“new forms of literacy made possible by digital technology developments, although
new literacies do not necessarily have to involve use of digital technologies to be
recognized as such”. “Commonly recognized examples of new literacies include such
practices as instant messaging, blogging, maintaining a website, participating in
online social networking spaces, creating and sharing music videos, podcasting and
videocasting, photoshopping images and photo sharing, emailing, shopping online,
digital storytelling, participating in online discussion lists, emailing and using online
chat, conducting and collating online searches, reading, writing and commenting on
fan fiction, processing and evaluating online information, creating and sharing digital
mashups, etc”1. According to this explanation and examples, all “new literacies” rely
on digital devices and most of them are closely related to Internet and computers. I
think that’s the reason why they are considered as “new”.
On the other hand, “popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives,
attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an
informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture”2. This is much easier to
understand than “new literacies”. Popular culture exists in every period of time and
can be presented through many ways, including so called “new literacies”. Thus,
popular culture is the production of certain times and it may change with the
development of society.
1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_literacies
2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_culture
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When I look back on my own reflection on multimodal texts through my life, I
found that I am always a big fan of popular culture since I was very young. My
mother told me that after going back home from kindergarten, the first thing I did was
turning on TV to watch cartoon until she called me to have supper. As a continuation
of that, I asked my father to subscribe to a monthly magazine called “Kid Cartoon”
for me. Besides that, another big hobby for me was listening to stories. At first, my
mother read story books for me in order to help me sleep early. After getting used to
that, I couldn’t fall asleep without listening to stories. After several months, perhaps
my mother was sick of reading endless stories for me, she bought me a recorder and
many cassettes filled with stories when I was four. In this way she was released, and I
started my days “playing” with that recorder. I spent a lot of time listening to stories,
not only at night, and sometimes I read “Kid Cartoon” while listening to the stories.
After listening to enough stories, my mother started to encourage me to tell stories
myself and use that recorder to record them. When I look back now, I think it helps
me a lot on the development of verbal ability.
For very long time, TV and recorder occupied most of my spare time. However,
all the cassettes I had were story cassettes. During my last year of primary school, I
once heard a Chinese song called “Tomorrow will be a better day” through the
recorder in my friend’s home. I was attracted by that song immediately and borrowed
that cassette from her. I listened to the cassette again and again. Actually, that was my
first time of encountering pop music. From then on, I started to enjoy popular music.
I entered secondary school at the year 2000. That was almost the time when Jay
Chou, a Taiwanese singer and songwriter, became famous. The first Jay’s album I
bought was an unofficial one. I loved the melody and lyrics very much. After
knowing more about him, I totally became his fan. I loved his songs, his talents and
even his personal style. I wanted to listen to his songs whenever and wherever
possible, so I pleaded with my father to buy me a walkman. Thanks to this walkman, I
completely fell into the world of pop music. I bought every album of Jay Chou, and
also some albums of other singers’, most of whom were from Hong Kong and Taiwan.
English songs came to my life when I was thirteen. One day my cousin told me
that his favorite singer was Backstreet boys and he strongly suggested me to have a
try. Although I can hardly understand the meaning of each song, I enjoyed the melody
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very much. So was Westlife. Later, I don’t remember at what circumstances I
encountered Avril Lavigne, a Canadian pop-punk girl and Linkin Park, an American
rock band. They first showed me what Rock N’Roll is to some extent. All those
English songs and singers gave me the first impression of western popular culture.
With days and nights listening to them, I learned many English words and phrases
from the lyrics. With getting used to their English accents and expression, I also
practiced my “sense of English” gradually and unconsciously. I even made friend
with a handsome boy because of the American rock band Linkin Park.
My father bought the first computer in the year 2001 when I was twelve. My
little brother and I were very excited about it. At first, we don’t know that there was a
thing called Internet which our computer could access in. We only used it to play
games and watch VCDs. As long as we realized the importance of accessing to the
Internet world, computer seemed to be more useful. When I started to explore Web
pages, the world became nearer and more open to me. Later I got my own QQ, which
is the most widely used instant messaging service in mainland China. I chatted with
my friends and many strangers from different parts of China through QQ. At that time
it was only a tool for chatting and nothing else you could do with it. But now, it can
be used to send text messages, images, songs, videos and even video conversation is
possible through it. Installing QQ to smart phones is also indispensible to most
Chinese. Gradually it plays a very important role in my social life. If my friend
changed his or her phone number, he or she just announces on QQ and everyone of
his or her QQ friend will know it.
I entered college in the year 2007. As long as I became a college student, I
found that most of my friends and classmates started to sign up and communicate on a
social website called Renren, which is more like the Chinese version of Facebook.
Everyone who signed up on this website must use real name, which gives its users a
big convenience to look for old friends who are not in touch with each other. Besides,
by uploading personal photos and current status, friends who are not in the same city
can still keep in touch.
In college, my enthusiasm to Rock N’Roll was enhanced greatly. The best
friend I have in college share a lot of interests with me, such as movies, TV dramas,
songs, and most important, live performances of rock bands, including both Chinese
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and western bands. I had no idea of the huge powerful appeal of live performances
before I actually went to join one. I understood the charm of Rock N’Roll exists in
live performance. I enjoy the environment which Rock N’Roll creates. Rock music
doesn’t only mean rebellion and abreaction, it is also a way to express and enjoy
oneself. When the performers shout, the audience would shout with them and pogo;
when performers sing a peaceful song, they would listen to them quietly and carefully.
We went to almost every live show together no matter in bars, in parks or in our
college. We often exchange our ideas about popular culture together. This helped me
get to know more about western culture.
I am also a user of a Chinese website Douban, which is a big sharing website.
In this website, you can find almost any books, songs, movies and TV shows around
the world. On each page you will find not only the introduction, but also the
comments left by other users. Another interesting function of this website is the
“Douban group”. Users who share the same interests may set up their own groups to
communicate with each other by putting out posts. By exchanging with other users, I
get to know many different opinions on the things I am interested in.
Nowadays, the hottest social website in China must be Weibo, the Chinese
version of Twitter. Its users share, release and receive messages by posting status less
than 140 words a time. I started to use it in 2011. I can “follow” the users I am
interested in, including my friends or even some celebrities, or “be followed” by other
users on this website. Now I spend a lot of time on Weibo every day, and I enjoy
reading all those statuses.
With the development of technology, I am sure that more and more new kinds
of literacies will appear in the future. They make our life more colorful and easier. I
now found that most of my access to the new literacies happened outside the
classroom. Now that the development of new literacies is inevitable, why not
introduce it to the classroom? I know many teachers had already done that, and that is
what I am going to do too.
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