Mark Peters

Everyday Literacies in Semi-rural Gambia: an Ethnographic Study of Literacy in One Family and Their Environment Mark Peters

The human being is a very intriguing 'object' to study. Everywhere in the world, human beings live in different circumstances. In these circulstances, they all have unique habits which suit their culture. When zooming in on these different circumstances, communication is important to continue important cultural habits. Language is one of the ways to accomplish this. In the past, there have been a lot of researches conducted on language in relatively rich as well as crowdy areas. More pover and sparsely populated regions are less intensively studied. My study was carried out in Africa, more specific in a semi-rural Gambian area. My goal was to find out how literacy was practiced in an ordinary semi-rural Gambian area. What I found was that unless one might not expect a big role of literacy in such a family, literacy is very important for them. The family members had a very positive attitude towards being literate. In the course of my research I saw that literacy is practiced by them in several ways, such as; expressing identity, continuing ancient cultural habits and the fact that people are proud to show their literacy skills. Unique was my study of the local language Mandinka.