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Sponsors of Literacy is an idea originally proposed by Deborah Brandt in her 1998 article also called “Sponsors of Literacy.”〔Brandt, Deborah. “Sponsors of Literacy.” ''College Composition and Communication'' 49.2 (1998): 165-185.〕 In Brandt’s view, sponsors of literacy are “any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy—and gain advantage by it in some way.”〔Brandt “Sponsors of Literacy” 166.〕 Sponsors of literacy are anyone who is involved with literacy, whether reading or writing. Some are directly connected to literacy processes, such as teachers instructing young children to read. Others have less obvious connections, such as government policies that affect how individuals can achieve their literacy potential. These sponsors can promote literacy or stifle it in some way. Some sponsors might not even realize how they affect literacy or even that they affect it at all. Others recognize their involvement in literacy and actively work to promote it. Brandt's article has been cited in more than 250 other scholarly articles. Her sponsors of literacy idea has been used to discuss reading and writing instruction but has spread beyond the academic fields of composition and/or rhetoric. The idea of sponsors of literacy is now part of larger discussions regarding classroom management, social practices, popular culture, comics, bookstores, economics, community engagement, workplace cultures, technologies, and the information age. ==Background== ''See also: Literacy, Literacy in American Lives, Deborah Brandt'' At the time Brandt’s article was published, she was a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a project head at the National Research Center on English Learning and Achievement (CELA). In forming her theory of sponsors of literacy, Brandt conducted interviews with ordinary Americans, meeting with a “diverse group of people born roughly between 1900 and 1980”〔Brandt, “Sponsors of Literacy” 167.〕 and exploring their memories of learning to write and read. Brandt found that most people recalled the “people, institutions, materials, and motivations”〔Brandt, “Sponsors of Literacy” 167.〕 involved in the process of gaining literacy. Brandt begins her article with the concept of sponsors, whom she defines as “powerful figures who bankroll events or smooth the way for initiates.”〔Brandt, “Sponsors of Literacy” 167.〕 These sponsors are typically “richer, more knowledgeable, and more entrenched” in their areas of expertise than those they sponsor.〔Brandt, “Sponsors of Literacy” 167.〕 Despite this difference, sponsors “enter a reciprocal relationship with those they underwrite.”〔Brandt, “Sponsors of Literacy” 167.〕 Sponsors contribute credibility and/or resources but potentially receive benefits in return, “whether by direct repayment or, indirectly, by credit of association”〔Brandt, “Sponsors of Literacy” 167.〕 with the sponsored. While usually thought of as an economic or business term, Brandt took the idea of sponsors and applied it to those who promote literacy learning. Brandt posits that “it is useful to think about who or what underwrites occasions of literacy learning and use”〔Brandt, “Sponsors of Literacy” 166.〕 because those sponsors “set the terms for access to literacy and wield powerful incentives for compliance and loyalty.”〔Brandt, “Sponsors of Literacy” 166-167.〕 Literacy, Brandt claims, is highly prized, “a key resource in gaining profit and edge,”〔Brandt, “Sponsors of Literacy” 169.〕 which helps to explain “the lengths people will go to secure literacy for themselves or their children. But it also explains why the powerful work so persistently to conscript and ration the powers of literacy. The competition to harness literacy, to manage, measure, teach, and exploit it, has intensified throughout the century.”〔Brandt, “Sponsors of Literacy” 169.〕 In her article, Brandt mentions that some “people throughout history have acquired literacy pragmatically under the banner of others’ causes.”〔Brandt, “Sponsors of Literacy” 168.〕 However, most frequently, “literacy takes its shape from the interests of its sponsors.”〔Brandt, “Sponsors of Literacy” 168.〕 Brandt posits that “literacy learning throughout history has always required permission, sanction, assistance, coercion, or, at minimum, contact with existing trade routes.”〔Brandt, “Sponsors of Literacy” 167.〕 Brandt used much of her research for “Sponsors of Literacy” in writing her 2001 book Literacy in American Lives.〔Brandt, Deborah. ''Literacy in American Lives''. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001.〕 In the book, Brandt expounds on the varying roles that literacy sponsors play in individual lives by giving a wider look at how economic, political, and sociocultural factors affected American literacy in the 1900s. Throughout her works, Brandt mentions several common sponsors of literacy, including older relatives, teachers, priests, supervisors, military officers, editors, and influential authors.〔Brandt, “Sponsors of Literacy” 167.〕 Many of these people and institutions have either promoted or provided access to literacy throughout history as well as in modern-day society and serve as a starting point in listing more examples of sponsors of literacy present through both American history and modern-day American societies. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sponsors of Literacy」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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