A semantic network around literacy: terms and adjectives and their possible meanings

This article investigates the semantic network that is established around the term literacy, the terminologies and qualifications mobilized to characterize literacy and its developments in terms of researched topics, theoretical frameworks and intersections. We selected 3 editions of the International Colloquium on Literacy and Written Culture for constituting an important scientific instance in the discussion of the subject. The corpus data was analyzed from the perspective of content analysis based on documentary research. The results show that there is a diversity of terms attached to theoretical perspectives and that many deal with social and cultural practices in history and contemporaneity. Some terms aim to delimit contexts, groups and subjects and the nature of literacy. Others specify languages, not necessarily registered by the alphabet, showing the strength of the term literacy. The existence of metaphors that disperse the terms and, therefore, a less precise conceptualization of literacy.