Multiliteracies is a new term coined by the New London Group in order to address the melting pot of languages within a society. There are two parts to multiliteracies, “the first argument engages with the multiplicity of communications channels and media; the second with the increasing salience of cultural and linguistic diversity” (Cope, Kalantzis 5). The first part being that the world is rapidly changing as more cultures are recognized through the media, which leads to the second part of creating social diversity. Communications are changing and becoming more connected to the world globally instead of locally, so there cannot be a fixed standard that encapsulates all literacy learning.

1. Literacy Pedagogy: “traditionally this has meant teaching and learning to read and write in page-bound, official, standard forms of the national language” (Cope, Kalantzis 9).
As the quote states, traditionally literacy pedagogy meant learning one standard language. This was in order to create learning conditions so that there is equal social participation. Now knowing this, the definition needs to be broaden to fully understand context of cultures and the linguistic diversity as it is today.

2. Civil Pluralism: “Access to wealth, power, and symbols must be possible no matter what identity markers, such as language, dialect, and register, a person happens to have” (Cope, Kalantzis 15).
Multiliteracies is about creating a social diversity through communications, whereas civil pluralism is the ability to be presented in the society without discrimination. This is the result of successful multitiliteracies within a society.

3. Metalanguage: “A language for talking about language, images, texts and meaning-making interactions” (Cope, Kalantzis 24).
Metalanguage should be used to recognize and properly describe the distinction between texts in order to relate it back to the context of cultures. Although metalanguage still needs to have some set criteria, it should be flexible in the way it can be taught, such as through a variety of tools. This then creates a design for understanding of concepts within that culture.