The Democratization of Text

As a IB Language and Literature teacher, I am thinking about one of the aspects of what I need to be teaching this fall: the democratization of text. 

What is the "democratization of text" you ask? Simply, it is the idea that all written word has value and that one value will not be more than another.  This means that something I think is wonderful, "The Great Gatsby" for instance, will not have more value in my classroom than, say... the back of a cereal box or the horoscope section in the newspaper.  

What this means for me and my students is something that I think I can get behind.  All text, written and visual, have value to communicate a message.  All types of text can have bias, point of view, and the ability to trigger an emotional response.  

This also means that I need to bring in many text types that I have never considered before.  Graffiti is one of the text types that I have been hunting for this summer.  I assume that all of the graffiti that I have found here in the PNW is in English, but that does not mean that I can read all of the text in the pictures I took.  This will be an interesting challenge for my students as well: can we determine what the message is?

Take a gander at these images and see if you have any insight to share with me.