Ochendo: An African Journal of Innovative Studies

This paper foregrounds the importance of the fusion of sociolinguistics and pragmatics in maximising literacy efforts through the prevalent social knowledge transfer mechanism, inherent in a given literacy (social) or communicative context. Knowledge is fertilised by this social reality which forms the springboard for literacy. Literacy is the ability to interpret squiggles and assign meaning to them; create ideas within the experiential knowledge platform, identify and understand realities to infer and communicate effectively “using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts.” This paper uses socio-pragmatic enactment to highlight how literacy can be achieved reasonably through a “local” condition strategy. That means achieving the maximal knowledge or information about the world around us which comes alive through the printed or written words, powerful images or sounds of multi-media culture. Thirty students were used for the assessment. It was observed that applying the “local” condition, strategy within a particular sociocultural milieu, helps the students achieve literacy at superlative level.

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