Oh Warnie, Warnie, Warnie...what nxt?

"Warne caught cheating by text, says wife" (The Age, Melbourne, Sept 24, 2007)

What next for Shane Warne, famous Australian cricket spin-king, and infamous mobile phone text addict? His wife/ex-wife Simone, accuses him of ending their marriage reconciliation by having yet another SMS-maintained affair, brought to light by a miss-sent text message. Of course, today's news reveals his side of the story - of course he is not denying the text message, but instead saying that their marriage was not in a period of reconciliation at the time, but over.

But the content of the text message was interesting in itself, revealing that someone whom we would expect to be quite competent in the use of SMS, made a slip-up, or a typo, or an error.

• "Hey beautiful, I'm just talking to my kids, the back door's open." - Shane sent
• "You loser, you sent the message to the wrong person." - Simone replied

I must admit, my first reaction was to laugh. Apart from the fact that popular news media discourse plays up the drama of Shane Warne's private life to the level of soap opera, I was entertained by the literacy event that had occurred.

When I first entertained the concept of 'mobile literacy', the generative thoughts arose from SMS language as a linguistic form of communication. I had seen far too many uses of 'txt' language emerging in formal English essays and exams, where they didn't belong. However, the New Literacy Studies approach - drawing on such researchers as the New London Group (1996; 2000), Gunther Kress (2003), James Paul Gee (2000; 2001; 2003), Victoria Carrington (2004; 2005) - opened up the nature of multimodal literacy to me, and a connection to the social life of individuals using mobile technologies. The connection between mobile technologies and multimodal literacy (or design) forms the core relationship for a concept of mobile literacies.

In terms of Shane and Simones' SMS conversation, how might we talk of the 'mobile literacies involved there?

First I suppose I should begin at the traditional concept of literacy as related to linguistic communication. In terms of grammar, language use, syntax, the messages are surprisingly traditional. There is no evidence of 'squeezetext', 'txt', 'acronymy', 'emoticonymy', etc (Carrington, 2004; 2005; Bodomo & Lee, 2002). This is not the language of digital natives, but rather, the traditional grammar of 'digital immigrants', imported into SMS as part of their immigrant accent (Prensky, 2001a). What was the purpose in this conversation for using full and expressive language, or is this they way they use language in txts all of the time? If the latter, then they may be an example like Larissa Hjorth (2005) uncovered in a Melbourne study, where a student indicated that there were different rules and expectations for the use of language in SMS conversations: long and expressive writing was a sign that the person writing it did not have full control of expected conventions of SMS language. Either way, at the level of linguistic literacy, both Shane and Simone seem to conform to traditionalist conventions.
What other literacy practices are involved then?

Gestural design? (New London Group, 2000, 25). Well there was an extent to which Shane's gestures in pressing the buttons on his phone were involved in the error of selecting the correct recipient for his message. Despite his dexterity as the 'king-of-spin' in cricket, did his fingers make an error in this instance? Then again, amid all the other SMS that this self-confessed text addict probably sends, what is just one mistake? Well, it did result in his wife/ex-wife finding out about a new indiscretion. The thumb-pads of mobile phones are not really designed for writing alphabetically based messages. Still, some young people seem amazingly adept at it, resulting in the development of such terms as 'thumb cultures' (Glotz, Bertschi & Locke, 2005).

There are however, specific features to mobile technologies which I do not believe that mutiliteracies approaches have yet adequately dealt with, and therefore I need to move further afield, into discussions of specific technological, digital, ICT, information and cultural literacy realms.

There has been a good deal written on the literacy practices involved in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Since the mid-1990s, the Internet has formed a point of focus for a literacy researchers and educators, seeking to understand how this technologies are, and can be best used. From Gilster's concept of 'digital literacy' (1997) to research into the literacy practices involved with hypertext reading and writing, and the whole raft of other communication and entertainment mediums that this makes available. (Snyder, 1996; 1997; 2002; Snyder & Beavis, 2004).

I would like to draw from a single paper at this point, where Yoram Eshet-Alkalai (2004) reinterprets Gilster's concept of 'digital literacy' (1997) in the light of recent and continuing technological development. Eshet-Alkalai breaks digital literacy down into:

• Photo-visual literacy: the art of reading visual representations
• Reproduction literacy: the art of creative recycling of existing materials
• Branching literacy: hypermedia and non-linear thinking
• Information literacy: the art of scepticism.
• Socio-emotional literacy (1997).

The most relevant of these for this circumstance is that of branching literacy. Here I apply it to the idea of writing an email, then linking it to a chosen address from the phone's address book or entered by hand. It is clear than unless Shane intentionally sent this text to his wife/ex-wife, and then this is where his error occurred: whatever method he used to select the recipient for his message was incorrect. Whether he used a recent call or message sent/received list, selected from the address book (perhaps the name of his mistress is similar to Simone), or entered the number manually (would he really keep track of a whole lot of numbers in his head?), this is where the misstep in his branching literacy practice occurred. Why this happened? Well, the only person to know would be Shane himself. When he sent the message did he realise immediately that it had been to the wrong person, and hope to hell his wife didn't understand it or take it seriously? Or did he just go "Oh shit!" and expect consequences?

In terms of a concept of cultural literacy as developed by Shirato and Yell (2000), where one understands the cultural and social restrictions for a particular form of communication, well, we can say that Shane simply wasn't paying enough attention. Considering his professional life has been plagued with incidences of womanizing and accusations from women all over the world that he had affairs or one-night-stands with them, he still wasn't paying enough attention in this case to avoid sending the message to the wrong person. Apart from being a personal stuff-up, it may also be indicative of a social move where the use of SMS has become more normalised, more invisible, and for some people, and essential part of their communication regime. The use of SMS as a culturally confirmed communication medium - if we are to take the popular media as a measure - is confirmed in its increasing use across a range of popular media, from television, to newspapers, to advertisements, radio, websites, etc. SMS has become a typical communication tool integrated into the everyday lives of an increasing number of people in Australia - and worldwide, to differing degrees. Shane Warne's careless use of the SMS medium to conduct what the wider public may see as another example of his womanising, resulted in his 'backstage', private life, coming to fore in the public forum (thanks to his wife/ex-wife giving the story to a women's magazine) (Fortunati, 2005).

The activities of Shane Warne and his text messaging, provides a seemingly continuous source of soap opera drama for the Australian media to feed to the public. But what this incident demonstrated is it also provides an interesting insight into the ways in which social practice using mobile technologies can reveal a range of important literacy practices occurring. Competence in the use of mobile technologies for effective communication – or capable mobile literacies – requires an individual to have competence in a range of multimodal literacy or designs. The indication here is that Shane Warne slipped up in some of these.

References

Bodomo, A. & Lee, C. (2002). Changing forms of language and literacy: technobabble and mobile phone communication in Hong Kong. Literacy and Numeracy Studies, 12(1), 23-44.

Carrington, V. (2004). Texts and literacies of the Shi Jinrui. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 25(2), 215-228.

Carrington, V. (2005). Txting: the end of civilization (again)? Cambridge Journal of Education, 35(2), 161-175.

Eshet-Alkalai, Y. (2004). Digital literacy: a conceptual framework for survival skills in the digital era. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 13(1), 93-107.

Fortunati, L. (2005). Mobile Telephone and the Presentation of Self. In Ling, R. & Pedersen, P. E. (Eds.). Mobile communications: re-negotiation of the social sphere. London: Springer-Verlag, 203-218.

Gee, J. P. (2000). Teenagers in new times: a new literacies studies perspective. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 43(5), 412-420.

Gee, J. P. (2001). Reading as situated language: a sociocognitive perspective. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 44(8), 714-725.

Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Gilster, P. (1997). Digital literacy. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Glotz, P., Bertschi, S. & Locke, C. (Eds.) (2005). Thumb Culture: The Meaning of Mobile Phones for Society. London: Transaction.

Hjorth, L. (2005). Postal presence: A case study of mobile customization and gender in Melbourne. In Glotz, P., Bertschi, S. & Locke, C. (Eds.). Thumb Culture: The Meaning of Mobile Phones for Society. London: Transaction, 55-66.

Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the New Media Age. London: Routledge.

The New London Group (1996). A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60-92.

The New London Group (2000). A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures. In Cope, B. & Kalantzis, M. Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. London: Routledge, 9-37.

Prensky, M. (2001a). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the horizon, 9(5), 1-2. Accessed at: www.marcprensky.com/writing/ (25 Sept, 2007).

Prensky, M. (2001b). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Part II: Do they really think differently?. On the horizon, 9(6). Accessed at: www.marcprensky.com/writing/ (25 Sept, 2007).

Schirato, T. & Yell, S. (2000). Communication and cultural literacy: an introduction. St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin.

Snyder, I. (1996). Hypertext: the electronic labyrinth. Carlton South: Melbourne University Press.

Snyder, I. (Ed.) (1997). Page to Screen: taking literacy into the electronic era. St Leondards: Allen & Unwin.

Snyder, I (Ed.) (2002). Silicon Literacies: communcation, innovation and education in the electronic era. London: Routledge.

Snyder I. & Beavis, C. (Eds.) (2004). Doing Literacy Online: teaching, learning and playing in an electronic world. Cresskill: Hampton Press.

Rudolph Giuliani's interrupting mobile

The debate around the proper use of mobile phones in different social situations has again manifested itself, this time through the actions of the former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani during a speech to the NRA (September 21, 2007). In the midst of his speech he was interrupted by a mobile phone call, apparently from his wife, which he answered, dealt with, and then reflected on the dual positive/negative aspect of modern communications, that one can be contacted anywhere, anytime. The most curious thing about this event though, is whether or not it was an authentic interruption, or a staged performance.

One video on YouTube [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NljO7w8fXKc ] discusses this very fact through a comparison with a previous speech, made in June this year (2007) to a different group (a Latino based-group). Both mobile phone interruptions occurred in the middle of the speech, and both featured the "I love you" comment to his wife. Whether or not this incident was authentic or not was not the issue for myself. Rather, what interested me was the performance aspect and the meaning-making (literacy) practices at play - authentic or not.

Let's assume first that the "surprise" calls were actually authentic, that they were really calls from a loving wife to her loving husband, whom she was not aware was in the middle of the speech. In contemporary post-industrial societies there is an emerging social expectation that there are times when it is appropriate, indeed, important, to switch off one's mobile phone. It seems to me that a formal speech to a group of constituents would be such a situation. In answering his mobile phone in the middle of his speech, this forms a moment where the "backstage" is brought to the front. This phenomena was observed by Leopoldina Fortunati observed on trains in Italy: when individuals spoke about private matters on a mobile phone in public, there was a sense in which the public persona of the person was changed by the emergence of their private lives - the "backstage" (2005). The fact that we only hear half of the conversation creates a further sense of mystery, in that something has been revealed, we are just unsure what. However, we might also call it an error in his "cultural literacy" (Shirato & Yell, 2000) practices: he has misread the situation as one where it is appropriate to answer a phone and have a personal conversation. Then again, he does keep the phone conversation short, to the point and indicates that he will call back. However, in such situations, what is indicated to an audience may be that the personal call is more important that all of the people in the audience. It is interesting to note than in NEITHER case did he appear to apologise to his audience for the interruption (although I have not seen the entirety of either speech). Does this imply that his actions were a natural part of this activity, to be tolerated, indeed accepted and applauded? In both cases he did receive applause for his candor and involved the audience either through reference, or in the first instance holding up the phone and encouraging the audience to say hello. One could surmise that this is one such way in which the social practices around 'mobile fields' are being negotiated and transformed: despite reworkings of traditional rules of etiquette suggesting you give your full attention to your audience in such situations, this public figure has sought to change the predictability of the practice of the public speech, which "...change over time as people engage in them in partially idiosyncratic ways." (Dimitriadis & Kamberelis, 2006, 67). Will we see further examples transforming the field of the public speech and the habitus of the public speaker, through the use of new technologies in the future?

In any case, if the incident was indeed accidental and unintentional, then there is an extend to which more is revealed of the humanness of the politician - he has a wife whom he loves and commitments beyond the scope of the presentation he is giving - which is perhaps one reason why there is speculation that this was a staged performance, intended to humanise this public figure.

If these 'unintentional' speech interruptions were actually staged, there is still an extent to which they are important and indicative of changes in the way we communicate and make-meaning. In terms of literacy practices involved, a whole raft of multimodal design strategies are in play. There is the fact that he takes the personal call loud enough, using aural design, ensures that the audience is involved in, and drawn into the conversation. His gestural design, or body language - despite dropping his head initially to answer the call - remains open and directed to the audience, suggesting that this conversation is for them as well as himself. He additionally reflects in the latter speech on the nature of this 'modern age' and it's technology. Thus the mobile phone call becomes yet another way for the politician to draw comparisons and similarities with the lived experiences of his audience: "See, I get phone calls at all sorts of strange times too! It can be bad and it can be good, but it is a part of the modern world that we share." In such a case the mobile technology serves as a form of symbolic communication (Katz & Sugiyama, 2006) or even symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1977). In both these cases, the incident of mobile communication means more than simply taking a phone call: in the particular context of use, it takes on a range of connotations and meanings. The "I love you" line to his wife, repeated in the latter speech, obviously draws on a discourse of domesticity, drawing Giuliani as a caring and loving husband. The fact that the call arrives in the middle of a formal speech - apart from providing a ready-made audience for his gushing sentiments - also creates a performance of an imperfect human, prey to the inconsistencies and interruptions of daily life. The mobile phone in this case, becomes a tool of communication, to create discourse of humanness around the political figure. As a form of symbolic capital it may be surmised, mixed results are achieved. Whilst the place of a private mobile phone call in the midst of a formal presentation provides a catalyst for debate around 'mobile manners', in this case it is used to bring the "backstage" - or his private life - to the fore, to create a positive image of his domestic life (Fortunati, 2005). The most telling indicator of this is the loving and positive nature of the call. What a different image would have been put across if the call had been from his wife, berating him for something, or accusing him of being unfaithful. The symbolic value of the mobile phone in such a case would be far from positive.

Overall, the most curious thing about this event was simply the disruption of a traditional social practice by an individual's engagement with a mobile technology. Does this mean we are on the verge of witnessing a new wave of transgressions of traditional literacy inspired by social practices around mobile technologies. We have already seen this with the emergence of SMS - where traditional rules of written communication and grammar are transgressed and transformed in the emergence of a new written form. To what extent will social and literacy practices around mobile technologies continue to change other aspects of our literate lives?

Needless to say, in the wider media (e.g. morning news television) it has sparked debate and discussion about when and where it is appropriate to use mobile phones, and various other features of mobile technologies (SMS) and other technologies (email). This is of course one area that my current research with high school students seeks to examine.

References

Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dimitriadis, G. & Kamberelis, G. (2006). Theory for Education. New York: Routledge.

Fortunati, L. (2005). "Mobile telephone and the presentation of self." In Ling, R. & Pedersen, P.E. (Eds.). Mobile communications: re-negotiation of the social sphere. London: Springer-Verlag, 203-218.

Katz, J.E. & Sugiyama, S. (2006). "Mobile phones as fashion statements: evidence from student surveys in the US and Japan." new media & society, 8(2), 321-337.

Schirato, T. & Yell, S. (2000). Communication and cultural literacy: an introduction. St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin.