A Critical Look at the ‘Literacy Craze’: Issues and Recommendations

Literacy has gained significant attention in applied linguistics and language education, with various types of literacy (e.g., multimodal literacy, assessment literacy, feedback literacy, digital literacy and artificial intelligence literacy) being proposed and researched. In this Viewpoint article, we offer a critical examination of this ‘literacy craze,’ which may lead to excessive specification and conceptual boundaries, thereby weakening the pedagogical value and applicability of research outcomes. We propose a tentative framework comprising four dimensions – that is, scope, uniqueness, utility and generativity – to evaluate and determine whether a specific type of ‘literacy’ is conceptually justified, theoretically coherent and pedagogically meaningful. We conclude by calling for future research on ‘literacies’ to be conducted in an academically responsible and pedagogically impactful way.