Texts
The definition of 'text' continues to expand as our understanding of literacy evolves and as technological developments change how we communicate. I like to think of texts very broadly as environmental stimuli for our sense of sight, sound, touch, and even taste and smell, from which we may form interpretations and responses. Texts may be elements in our environment, such as organisms (e.g., plants, animals), land, water, sky, and weather. More commonly, we envision texts as human-made, and either material or virtual or a combination of the two. Such texts may incorporate:
I keep an annotated library of texts in Diigo.
- letters and words (or other symbolic systems, e.g., mathematical formulas, musical notation, programming code),
- sounds (e.g., voice, instrumental, digital, ambient),
- visual design (e.g., typography, colour, line, light, patterns),
- tactile material (e.g., cloth, clay, plastic, film, canvas, paper),
- edible material (e.g., culinary arts), scents (e.g., perfumes, incense),
- live or recorded performances (e.g., dance, mime, clowning, acrobatics, gymnastics, skating, acting, opera, sport), and
- digitally altered and interconnected texts (e.g., hypertext, blogs, online videos, virtual games, mashups).
I keep an annotated library of texts in Diigo.