Last week I encountered a frustrating problem at the grocery story checkout. I handed the cashier about 10 coupons for my purchases that I had cut out from the Sunday circulars. Most of the items I had coupons for were things that I tend to buy on a regular basis, but there were one or two that I clipped because I saw that it had said $1.00 off, and that seemed like a great deal to me. At the end of my order the cashier began to scan the coupons. As she did so, the machine kept beeping, she would quickly glance at the coupon, view the item and then hand the coupon back to me saying, “Sir, this you do not have the correct item for this coupon.” She did this to me eight times, each time with a more irritated voice. Frustrated, I grabbed the coupons back, shoved them in my jeans pocket and paid for my order.
This experience counts as literacy for many reasons, beyond just reading the coupon for its content. First of all this experience taught me that coupons allow for a multiple-literacy discourse that I had not been participating in. As Carrington states, “Consumer texts are characteristically intertextual…In a sense, its relationship with the reader is to instruct her/him in the world around outside the text;” (Carrington, 2003) In order to use coupons well you need to be analytical in your reading. Coupons are a multimodal form of text that contain a variety of fonts, letter and number sizes, pictures and meanings. One needs to be able to sift through all of the information and match it up to the correct product. Oddly enough, the most important information almost always seems to be written in the finest of print. A further analysis of that will I’m sure show a definitely purpose by the company for the consumer. I had only done a quick surface read of both the coupons and the products. I had matched up the name to the name, but did not ‘read between the lines’ fully to see how the coupon was specific. I wonder if the companies do that on purpose, because when I was told that the coupons did not match, I still purchased the items. Are coupons purposefully multimodal in order to trick the consumer, rather than help them?
When I began to look deeper into this coupon event, and asked myself why I even bother using coupons I began to see that it was a social discourse that was part of and identity I was trying or thought I was supposed to make for myself. “a socially accepted association among ways of using language, of thinking, and of acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or ‘social network.’ (Gee, 1989) The secondary discourse that I was picking up on in my use of coupons was learned from my weekly visits to the grocery store, and seeing people use coupons. I have also seen television programs that try to teach people the amazing amount of savings you can achieve with coupons. These secondary discourses have always pushed me to feel guilty for not using coupons. The primary discourse I learned from was my childhood home on weekends when my grandmother would visit. My grandmother was obsessed with her coupon use. I can still see my grandmother in our family living room, with the sun beaming down on her through the picture window, feverishly clipping and talking about her ‘golden’ finds. “Elaine do you use Pam Cooking Spray?” she would should out to my mother. Perhaps a part of me wants to share that passion my grandmother had, and in a way help me to still feel connected to her.
Scribner says that, “…literacy-as-power metaphor emphasizes a relationship between literacy and group or community advancement…literacy has been a potent tool in maintaining the hegemony of elites and dominant classes in certain societies.” (Scribner, 1984) Reading, using and analyzing coupons can be a source of power in society. There are two possible ways to look at this, one as being part of an upper class or quite the opposite being part of a lower socio-economic class. Going through the Sunday circular you will encounter coupons for name brand items, items that cost more money. Even if you use the coupons most likely you are still paying more money than you would for generic brands. One can look at that and say coupons are made for the elite of society who can afford to purchase the more expensive name brand products. On the opposite end, society and certain cultures may view coupons as a discourse for people on the lower socio-economic end because these people may need coupons because they can’t afford to purchase the products without them. These social and cultural lenses can be used when analyzing this literacy event of using coupons.
