‘All Literacy Practices Contain Creative Elements.’ Discuss

TMA 3: ‘All literacy practices contain creative elements.’ Discuss, using examples of texts that might not be traditionally considered creative illustrating your explanations with ideas and theories from Part 1 of the module. (2000 words)

Standing in a shady corner of the playground of Tuol Sleng High School in Phnom Penh there is sign in English listing ten rules. These are not school rules, however, but regulations dictating the behaviour of concentration camp prisoners. Tuol Sleng High School was turned into the infamous S21 Prison used by the Khmer Rouge regime to torture and extract confessions from suspected dissidents, and the rules were allegedly explained to all prisoners when entering the camp. In this essay I wish to analyse the different factors at work in the creation and reception of this, now iconic, piece of English. I will argue that within the literacy practice of constructing and displaying these regulations there has been a high degree of creativity, and in order to truly understand the significance of this piece of English it is essential to understand the potential creators and well as the intended audience. By doing so I hope to show how the process of making meaning in any literacy practice, even when that practice is ostensibly purely (and brutally) functional, has creativity at is core, and that how the example of the S21 regulation sign was subject to multi-layered created forces. The ten regulations and an photograph of the original hand-painted sign in English are included as appendices and I will be referring to them throughout this essay. With regard to the meanings of 'literacy practices' and 'creativity' I will be interpreting these in light of Papen and Tusting's definitions (in Maybin and Swann 2006) as firstly, '...literacy practices - the ways people use and interact with texts in particular contexts, and the meaning that these hold for them. (p312) and, ''creativity' refers to   'making something which is new, which did not...