Tag Archives: PAB

This article reports on a study using systemic functional linguistics (SFL) as a metalanguage in primary grades to help students develop a deeper understanding of characterization as well as to promote dialogic interaction within the classroom. The researchers used Martin and White’s appraisal analysis, specifically positive/negative evaluation and turned up/turned down (graduation), and the process types, “the ‘happenings’ in a text” (sensing, doing, being, saying) to help understand direct and indirect characterization, how characters “show” and “tell” their emotions and motivations (Moore and Schleppegrell 97).

Using a Metalanguage in the Classroom

When reading and discussing literature, teachers and students have a literary metalanguage (terms such as symbol, metaphor and characterization) to help make meaning of stories and discuss author’s craft. When responding to writing, teachers often use the metalanguage of traditional grammar in service of improving the “correctness” or “mechanics” of student writing. (Moore and Schleppegrell 93)

In education we most often use literary and traditional grammar metalanguages, but rarely do we employ a functional metalanguage, such as SFL, “that connects language forms to meanings in contexts of use” (Moore and Schleppegrell 93). A literary metalanguage can provide a close reading of a text, often devoid of context, while a traditional grammar metalanguage can only focus on correctness, whether a students’ writing is “right” or “wrong.” What I find so interesting about Schleppegrell’s view of the functional metalanguage is that it provides a way of uniquely interfacing with the content of a text, providing new avenues and areas of analysis. I am also interested in the ways in which classroom discussion and dialog can be fostered once students have a working knowledge of the SFL metalanguage.

Besides giving teachers and students a common language for discussing and analyzing texts, which goes beyond literary metaphors and traditional grammar, the metalanguage can also be used by researchers to analyze students’ texts. Here, student writing becomes important data for researchers. As I am researching how students use the SFL metalanguage in relation to visual analysis, I can use the SFL metalanguage to analyze their writing.

What does the SFL metalanguage have to do with multimodal visual analysis?

So, what is the connection between students in primary school learning SFL to better understand characterization and multimodal visual analysis? Both textual analysis and visual analysis use SFL as a metalanguage. For instance, the functional labels above – participant, process, polarity, etc. are used in visual analysis as well (see Table 1). My view is that students can first learn the SFL metalanguage through doing something “fun,” like analyzing commercials and websites, and then learn how the metalanguage can be applied to texts, “drawing on the SFL notion of movement back and forth along a mode continuum” (Moore and Schleppegrell 94). SFL allows for this shifting of modes, from visual to textual analysis and even to discourse analysis.

Integrating Textual and Visual Analysis in the Classroom

I have not yet been able to fully integrate visual and textual analysis as a mode continuum in the classroom, instead mainly focusing on visual analysis, although I have made it clear to students that the metalanguage they are using for visual analysis comes from functional grammar. Textual analysis can be integrated more easily in primary and secondary school settings, where teachers have more time with students, not to say that integrating SFL textual analysis is impossible. In the future, I would like to develop worksheets and create activities, which use SFL to interact with content meaning. Although most of this research has been done in primary grades, it would certainly be useful on the college level. If there was a greater push for SFL nationally, especially to prepare students for the rigorous standards of Common Core, students would become familiar with SFL at a young age, creating positive literacy development for the future.

Works Cited

Moore, Jason, and Mary Schleppegrell. “Using a Functional Linguistics Metalanguage to Support Academic Language Development in the English Language Arts.” Linguistics and Education 26 (2014): 92-105. Web.

Introduction

In other posts I have outlined a general theory of systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis. Based in Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and adapted to analyze alternative semiotic systems such as image and sound by O’Toole, Kress, van Leeuwen, and others, SF-MDA applies the metafunctions, the ideational (experiential and logical), interpersonal, and textual to an analysis of images and screen-based texts.

I have to admit, I am still digesting O’Halloran’s article. She goes into an extremely complex level of detail, adapting the nuances of SFL to an analysis of imagery. Specifically, O’Halloran’s work deals with intersemiosis, the meaning created by the combination of multiple semiotic modes, especially the meaning that arises through the juxtaposition of image and text. This is an important field of research, as screen-texts almost always combine imagery with typography, and developing theoretical frameworks for understanding this new interpretative space is essential to multimodal research. I will explore some of these frameworks as well as discuss O’Halloran’s suggestion that multimodal texts can be effectively analyzed by using software such as Photoshop.

Analyzing Text and Images

While there has been a lot of research into using SFL to analyze an image or text, multimedia requires we develop Cross-Functional Systems, frameworks that can interpret, for instance, meaning created from the combination of image and text.

A basic theory of SFL is that language is divided into two stratums: content and expression. The content of language consists of lexicogrammar, the combination of words, word groups, clauses, clause-complexes, and mechanics, while the expression stratum consists of letters and phonology and is the way in which language is expressed.

O’Halloran adapts the content and expression stratums to imagery, especially the intersemiotic complementarity, or combination of multiple semiotic modes (see table 1).

Table 1 Systemic Functional (SF) Framework for Visual Images

Here the content stratum is broken into discourse semantics and grammar. Like the discourse level of language, which deals with large bodies of text, the discourse semantic level in this framework looks at visual images as a whole. At the more detailed level of grammar, the framework examines the scenes, episodes, figures, and members of an image. The expression plane deals with graphics and arrangement, which convey the content to the viewer. The expression stratum requires a Cross-Functional framework because this level combines several semiotic modes to create cohesive meaning – graphics, color, image, text, etc.

A Framework for Analyzing Advertisements

Table 2 Generic Structure of Advertisement

I have found table 2 useful for the analysis of advertisements. The table breaks advertisements into their visual and linguistic components. The visual component consists of the Lead, the Locus of Attention (LoA), the most salient figure in the advertisement, and the Display, the way in which the figure is displayed. Secondly, the table analyzes the linguistic components of the ad. Advertisements usually have an announcement followed by primary and secondary text. An ad may also have an enhancer, text which enhances the primary announcement as well as call-and-visit information, which displays website, contact information, etc.

Analyzing Multimodal Texts with Digital Technology

O’Halloran suggests using digital technology such as Photoshop to analyze multimodal texts. Teachers, researchers, and students could import an advertisement into Photoshop and annotate the text as well as experiment with color saturation, light, tint, and other features. O’Halloran has since developed multimodal analysis software, but I have not yet evaluated it. Other multimodal annotation software includes ELAN.

I find both aspects of O’Halloran’s article, the need for frameworks to interpret intersemiosis as well as the use of digital technology to interpret and annotate multimodal texts, important for my work. I would most likely test out multimodal annotation software before using it in a class, but the use of multimodal annotation software brings up several questions, the most important being how to address the time and resources required to use it in the classroom. What is the educational value of using digital technology to analyze multimodal texts? At this time, I am unsure of the answer to these questions. However, using annotation software in the classroom definitely reinforces a design-based pedagogy and gives students experience with digital tools.

Works Cited

O’Halloran, Kay L. “Systemic Functional-Multimodal Discourse Analysis (SF-MDA): Constructing Ideational Meaning Using Language and Visual Imagery.” Visual Communication 7 (2008): 443-75. Web.

Framing

Kress begins the piece by stating two “central assumptions”:

Central assumptions of multimodal approaches to representation and communication are (a) that communication is always and inevitably multimodal; and (b) that each of the modes available for representation in a culture provides specific potential and limitations for communication. (5)

Palmeri speaks to this first point in Remixing Composition: A History of Multimodal Writing Pedagogy when he argues in Part One that “Composition Has Always Already Been Multimodal.” Defining multimodality as something new cheapens its rich history in writing and composition. Indeed, just holding a conversation with someone involves multiple modes of expression – speech, image, sound, and gesture. The second central assumption has to do with the affordances and aptness of media, affordances being the particular strengths and weaknesses of a medium and aptness being the appropriateness of design choices given the social situation and resources available.

In particular, it seems evident to many commentators that writing is giving way, is being displaced by image in many instances of communication where previously it had sway … This realization calls forth a variety of responses, mostly negative, ranging from outright despair, anger, and nostalgia to some still utopian voices on the other end of the spectrum. (5)

The revolution of media, the shift from print to image, has caused alarm in composition on both sides of the aisle. Some traditionalists lament the rise of electronic communication and the concurrent supposed demise of student literacy. Students’ writing has become marred by “textspeak” – slang, abbreviations, emoticons, lack of punctuation. On the other side of the aisle, the “utopian voices” wholeheartedly embrace technology, some even welcoming the demise of print.

The Logic of the Page vs. The Logic of the Screen

Fig. 1 IoE Prospectus and IoE Homepage

Kress illustrates this revolution in media by comparing a London Institute of Education promotional brochure from 1992 with a screen-image of their website from 2005. The prospectus has a fixed reading path. The document is read from left to right and ordered hierarchically in terms of the structure of the institution. The prospectus assumes the life-world of the prospective student, that “the structure of the institution and of its knowledge [are] identical with the needs of the life-worlds of the individuals who might come to it as its students” (Kress 9). The prospectus gives the impression students must conform to the rules and organization of the institution.

The semiotic landscape in 2005 is drastically different. Instead of being read from left to right, the website contains multiple entry points, ways to navigate the page. “Reading” a website becomes an act of creative design. Images are the dominant mode of text on the website, while print text serves a secondary role. The designers of the webpage make no assumptions about the life-worlds of perspective students, as the audience of the website cannot be completely determined. Also, there is much more emphasis on students and student life as opposed to the organizational structure of the institution.

From Critique to Design

It [Critique] challenges the existing configurations of power and expects that in exposing inequities more equitable social arrangements could be developed. In terms of representation that would amount – at that time when the focus was clearly linguistic – to lessening the effects of power and its realization in linguistic form … Now, in the early part of the 21st century, there is no need for bringing the social into crisis: it decidedly is. (Kress 17)

This fourth section of “Gains and Losses” has had a profound impact on my thinking. Kress charts the shift from “competency” or “mastery” of knowledge in the 1950s to the new era of critique starting in the 1960s and 70s. Kress argues that this form of social critique, meant to bring our social institutions into crisis, is now making matters worse, as all of our social institutions are already in a state of crisis. Now pointing out unequal power relations in language is the dominant form of cultural capital, yet I do not think merely pointing out disparities in language goes far enough in the indictment of unequal power relations. Indicting linguistic inequalities almost always leaves unequal power structures in tact.

Reflection

Kress’s “Gains and Losses” has provided me with a theoretical framework for multimodal pedagogy. The essay also provides a vivid description of contemporary society with implications for education, as we move from a print-based to screen-based culture, and all the cultural ramifications this shift entails.

In the classroom, I have taken from this essay to teach students the differences between the logic of the page and the logic of the screen. Specifically, terms such as reading paths, entry points, and life-worlds, as well as navigating websites as an act of design, has framed classroom discussions and analyses of screen-based texts. Although some may worry that what Kress advocates will distract educators from the traditional goals of composition, I continue to keep in mind what Kress says, “The elites will continue to use writing as their preferred mode, and hence, the page in its traditional form” (18). Teaching writing and critical thinking is still my main concern, yet an understanding of our contemporary rhetorical situation helps create a relevant and responsive pedagogy.

Works Cited

Kress, Gunther. “Gains and Losses: New Forms of Texts, Knowledge, and Learning.” Computers and Composition 22.1 (2005): 5-22. Web.