Grocery Store Literacy Dig

My team went to a local grocery store to observe literacy in action.  My part of the activity was to observe and record the physical environment, draw a map - which you will see in class why I did not attend art school - describe the surroundings, and bring back artifacts.

Our first observation of the grocery store was that their entrance and exit doors were backwards from most stores.  Most stores have their "IN" door on the right and the "OUT" door on the left - as some of soon discovered, this store's entrance and exit doors were on the opposite sides.   So, even though the doors were labeled "IN" and "OUT", we still followed our instincts rather than notice the literacy signs in front of us.   The rest of the store seemed to be organized and made sense why items were placed where they were.  The signs labeled for the isles were accurate.  I liked some of the signs that stated "Need It" or "Don't Forget" throughout the isles.  There you could fine items such as can poppers and jar openers by the cans and jars of food - a very good marketing technique.

Since this was a small and local grocery store the physical environment was small.  Another observation was that the environment was very welcoming to a college town as there were sports logos and decorations throughout the store.  There were several signs that displayed "Homegrown Means Value" and emphasis was placed on their products being purchased in the U.S.A.  Another observation made was that the only sign in a language other than English was a sign that stated that customers were on surveillance camera in the beer and wine section of the store.  This sent our group a signal that if you were a consumer & this was the only sign in your language that it would be offensive.

Something that I noticed that I probably would not have unless I was observing literacy was a little game being played between two preschoolers in a cart.  One would say "tomato" and the other would say "tamato"; then, when they reached the vegetable isle they stared saying "potato" and "patato."

The artifact search was fun, I had never realized how much information that grocery stores have available for consumers.  My favorite artifacts were, of course, the recipes.  They also had helpful nutritional information in handout format as well.  One thing that I did take notice of was the all of information was only available in English.  This would be very frustrating if English was not your main language.  Some of the artifacts that I collected are shown below.

Overall this was a very interesting literacy dig.  It was intreging going to a normal everyday place such as a grocery store with an emphasis on observing literacy.  There are things that we take for granted everyday, such as sign postings and handouts, that we do not even recongize how much we depend on literacy in our everyday lives.