Divergent Usage: A Decolonial Reading of "Culture of Reading" in South African Educational Discourse

• In Event: Literacy, Scholarly Responsibility, and Problematics: An International Analysis of Inequitable Systems in the 21st Century

Abstract

Objectives of the Paper
The aim of this paper is to present a discursive analysis of how the term, a ‘culture of reading’ has been adopted and used in South African educational discourse, and its problematic relation to reading instruction. The prominence assigned to this term is exemplified in the 2019 State of the Nation address where President Ramaphosa emphasised the importance of establishing ‘a culture of reading’ in schools to improve reading instruction and address the country’s ‘literacy crisis’ (Fleisch 2018). The purpose of our analysis is to demonstrate how government officials operationalize the term ‘culture of reading’ and how these reveal numerous misunderstandings about what reading is and can achieve. In addition, we propose that the uncritical imposition of this term originating from the global north in African contexts perpetuates forms of inequality rather than addressing systemic injustices in literacy education.
Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
This qualitative analysis of government sanctioned texts was conducted using Fairclough's (2015) three-dimensional model for discourse analysis. The model enables the identification of discourses operating through the term culture of reading. The modes of inquiry include reading Graff’s (2010) literacy myth with Mignolo’s (2007) notion of the ‘tyranny of abstract universals’ (Mignolo, 2007), which reveals epistemological dependency (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013). These lenses reveal how contradictory Western conceptions of reading work against young African readers.
Data sources
Data draws from a corpus of 302 South African texts that reference the terms culture of reading/reading culture from 1990 through 2020. This paper focuses on 67 texts from government sources. Texts were examined to identify when and how the term was used, by whom and cross-referenced to map changes in usage over time. Because the term originated in the global north, we consider the extent to which the South African government's usage of the term culture of reading mimics or deviates from Northern discourses.
Results
Our findings show the term ‘culture of reading’ operates as an abstract universal that has historically failed to meet children’s needs. Its uncritical use reproduces assumptions about the presence of material, economic, family-community-school relationships, community cohesion and practices outlined in global north scholarship (Fletcher et al., 2012; Bridges, 2014; Kennedy et al., 2012; Phillips et al., 2017) that do not hold in South African contexts. A consequence of misapprehending a culture of reading as universal panacea reinforces the myth that literacy will eradicate ‘unemployment, social inequality, illiteracy and poverty’ (Mthethwa, 2018) and perpetuates deficit discourses about children and their communities. Instructional practices focussing only on the early years fundamentally misunderstands the recursive and ongoing nature of learning to read. Rather than imagining what is culturally relevant for Africa, discourses around literacy education tend to reproduce Northern developmental norms and narrow technicist practices.
Scholarly significance.
These discourses reveal how Western/Northern epistemologies are recycled in government rhetoric, silencing African ontologies and epistemologies and are used as tools to obfuscate failed reading campaigns. We argue it is time for reading practises in South Africa and around the globe to be subjected to a decolonising lens.

Author

• Kerryn Dixon, University of Nottingham