Critical
Responses | Informative
Summaries | Works Cited
"Multiple Literacies and Multimedia: A Comparison of Japanese and American Uses of the Internet"
by Taku Sugimoto and James A. Levin
As with many of the chapters in this text, Sugimoto and Levin directly state their structure and point:
In the first section of this chapter, we look at two examples of Japanese culture importing literacy technologies from other cultures. From these two cases, we support the position that literacy and communication technologies are adapted, not adopted. In the following section, we analyze differences in e-mail discourse among Japanese and among Americans to show that uses of e-mail technologies are culturally grounded. In the third section, we consider differences of literacy practices on the Web in Japan and in the United Sates. Through these case analyses, we conclude with discussions on the importance of our framework for conceptualizing the relationships between technology and literacy. (134)Sugimoto and Levin explore the “differences between American and Japanese uses of Internet-based technologies” as literacy mediums, and they identify and define the process of adaptation of these culturally situated technologies (133). To support their exploration, Sugimoto and Levin use historical evidence and modern case studies to document the literacy practices in Japan. A part of Japan's linguistic history is its ancient adaptation of Chinese into the beginnings of the Japanese language (134). And just as the Japanese had, centuries before, adapted the technologies of writing from Chinese (134-137), modern Japanese teenagers are adapting pagers into a communication medium appropriate for their youth culture. This Japanese tradition of adapting a communications medium to fit its culture and needs is also being applied to the Internet, which the Japanese are adapting “to fit into [their] own cultural values, [their] cultural ways of thinking and behaving” (134, 140). By documenting and analyzing the differences between Japanese and American uses of modern communication technologies, Sugimoto and Levin define this Japanese process of adaptation (133-134). In particular, Sugimoto and Levin’s “analyses of the cases [. . .] range from relatively superficial issues like different emoticons [. . .] used by Japanese and American users of e-mail to issues raised by Web-based electronic publishing.” (133). Sugimoto and Levin conclude that “One aspect of the cultural embeddedness of Internet literacies is that a great variety of literacy practices, many of which have been ‘hidden’ in everyday cultural practices instead of ‘authoritative,’ ‘official,’ ‘school-related’ ones, have emerged in cyberspace. Internet literacies open up a new window to our cultural-practices-related literacy, both with these new communication technologies and also with more conventional media” (152).