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Riding Critical and Cultural Boundaries: A Multiliteracies Approach to Reading Television Sitcoms

Riding Critical and Cultural Boundaries: A Multiliteracies Approach to Reading Television Sitcoms
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Author(s): Julie Faulkner (RMIT, Australia)and Bronwyn T. Williams (University of Louisville, USA)
Copyright: 2010
Pages: 12
Source title: Multiliteracies and Technology Enhanced Education: Social Practice and the Global Classroom
Source Author(s)/Editor(s): Darren Lee Pullen (University of Tasmania, Australia)and David R. Cole (University of Technology - Sydney, Australia)
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-673-0.ch005

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Abstract

This chapter explores the impact of new technologies on young peoples’ literacy practices, with a particular focus on humour as text. Acknowledging ways in which rapidly-changing cultural and technological conditions have reshaped how people work and play, the authors work within expanded definitions of literacy, or multiliteracies. Exploring the potential of humour to interrogate cultural assumptions, Australian and American students participated in a cross cultural television study. They viewed a ‘foreign’ sitcom, asking to what extent knowledge of the sitcom’s cultural norms was fundamental to an appreciation of the intended humour of the series. The student cohorts then communicated on line, developing their reading of the sitcoms in a cross cultural forum. The study asks how the students’ multiliterate practices, including their critical interpretations of television comedy, hold implications for literacy education.

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