WRITING AS A SOCIAL PRACTICE: SOCIAL LITERACIES

Abstract

This article examines writing as a social practice, challenging its reduction to a technical skill confined to the school environment. It seeks to understand how literacy studies contribute to interpreting the uses of written culture in their diversity, historicity, and embeddedness in social relations. A qualitative, bibliographic, and theoretical-interpretive study was conducted through a comparative reading of foundational works in the New Literacy Studies and scholarship incorporated into Brazilian educational debate. The analysis indicates that reading and writing acquire different meanings according to contexts of circulation, purposes, and forms of recognition that shape their use. The findings also show that the unequal valuation of literacies affects educational experiences. The study concludes that teaching writing requires connecting systematic learning, previously developed knowledge, and access to different discursive domains, thereby fostering an education capable of broadening students’ opportunities for meaningful interaction, participation, and engagement across diverse spheres of social life.