Relationships: Relating to Others around Technology

Narrative theorist Michael Bamberg argues that relational positioning of characters is one of the techniques speakers use to illuminate power dynamics in their stories (337). He calls researchers to attend to how narrators use language to align themselves with or separate themselves from other characters in their stories and to mark how this positioning constructs a (temporary) identity for the speaker to occupy in the narrative (337). As in Bamberg’s case of the adolescent girl who aligns herself with her teenage peers by emphasizing the things “we” did together, the DALN narrators use relational positioning to depict themselves playing computer games with others in peer-relationships (338-339). Siblings, relatives, and friends provide the narrators with access to computers, mentor the use of specific programs, and offer companionship or friendly competition in the use of computers, functioning as literacy sponsors who populate the social ecology of the contributors' experiences with technology.

As Sally Chandler, Joshua Burnett, and Jacklyn Lopez argue in their study of learning through social interaction among avid videogame players, it is the socializing player-peers do around videogames that makes the experience fulfilling and helps them learn to play. They argue that “how (and whether) an individual learns about computers often depends on connecting to friends or relatives who are insiders to digital communities of practice” (347). Like Chandler, Burnett, and Lopez’s videogame players who learn to play and beat games together, the DALN narrators and the characters they depict interact socially around technology, sharing common goals of learning and having fun using “self-directed, peer-supported learning” (362). Similarly, the peer-based computer activities the DALN narrators describe depict them working alongside siblings and classmates, engaging in technological literacy practices together that both entertain them and seem to have the side-effect of helping them develop comfort and familiarity with computers. The lack of overt instruction and the focus on collegiality and fun the narratives document suggests a comfortable, low-stakes environment for computer use which contrasts with the frustrations students often encounter when working with new technologies in formal learning environments.