Adolescent literacies: Chatting and learning across different planes of composition

This paper discusses a comparative analysis of seven adolescent girls' texts. Four text types were analysed: an instant message; a Facebook message; an email and an appraisal. The texts are linked by the theme of their composition, which is to review a film. The aims of the study were to explore the multisemiotic composition of the texts and to uncover patterns in discourse structure, and register along a continuum from informal to formal semiotic patterning. A further purpose of the analysis was to attempt to account for how ICTs function as a network of contextual variables that shape text negotiation. The context for the study is a South African state-controlled secondary school in which one of the researchers (Adrienne) taught English. The texts constitute one component of the data set, which also included literate life history dialogue journals; semi-structured interviews; and a questionnaire. The data was analysed using multiliteracies, Systemic Functional Linguistics and an experimental process ontology analysis. The latter approach opened out the discourse and register patterns to reveal unusual generative energies in the texts. Under the influence of a variety of ICT-enabled platforms for communication, adolescents are developing a flexible repertoire of multiple literate practices.