Framing: Topic, Time, and Place

The fact that several narrators identify time and place as essential meta-information for interpreting their stories suggests they think that knowing the place and the age at which these computer activities occurred will help the audience to understand what kind of activities they were and how the narrators experienced them. The concepts in these narratives that are foregrounded at the level of framing suggest narrative aspects (introductory preambles) and content aspects (place and time markers) that define these speakers’ memories of technology use. The use of introductory preambles allows narrators like Lanning, Johnston, and Springer to define the versions of themselves they present here in light of their technology memories: the audience is invited to view them through the frame of technology use. On the other hand, the inclusion of content markers associated with place and time that Musgrave, Dauterman, and Anonymous use suggests two contextual factors that these narrators seem to see as defining features of their early memories of computer use. Consideration of narrative and contextual factors like the ones found in these narratives can be used pedagogically to encourage students to reflect on how—and whether—they could define themselves in terms of their technology literacy and what contextual features might define (frame) their earliest memories of computer use. As the narratives analyzed here demonstrate, both differences and similarities crop up when students create a technology identity though the genre of the literacy narrative.