Abstraction and interpretation

The second stage in this framework was signalled by working to bring to light the main themes in this case and address the research questions (Spencer et al., 2014). This was achieved by in-depth description of the social phenomena and developing detailed categories that would portray the range of views and perspectives the data offered in relation to each theme and subtheme. The initially-coded data, thus, were further pushed so that analytic properties were developed and examined in order to explore the social practices that underpin participants’ engagement with literacy in this event and their meaning-making decisions.

Analysing social practices

To examine the social practices that participants drew upon to engage with seminar presentations, I first built my understanding of the event in terms of what was happening before, during and after the presentations. I also divided the slideshows of each observed presentation into their constituent stages as I will further explain in Chapter 7. These divisions aimed to provide “an organized, compressed assembly of information that permits conclusion drawing” (Miles & Huberman, 1984, p. 10). Using each stage as a unit of analysis, data from different methods were assembled and examined to explore the social practices presenters drew on to engage in this event and the semiotic choices that presenters highlighted while describing their meaning-making decisions.

Investigation of these divisions was separately carried out in relation to each presenter. Analysis was, then, compared across participants to gain a better

understanding of the similarities and differences that exist in how these presenters engaged with their experience in this event and offer a detailed descriptive framework

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to support the analysis of this case study. As interpretation of qualitative data is “coloured by …. previous and current personal, social, and cultural experience” (Bazeley, 2013, p. 4), I believe that my experience as a language teacher in the Preparatory-Year Programme in the same university has had a significant effect in shaping how I approached this case study and the analysis of the collected data while working to ground findings in data-driven evidence. For verification, permission from the participants was obtained during my first interview to contact them after completing an initial analysis in order to seek any needed data and verify my understanding of the collected data and my analysis. Two of the presenters have agreed to participate in a second interview while others have been contacted through text messages and emails.

Analysing multimodal meaning making

The methodological constraints that resulted from my inability to use photographic and video data impacted my examination of the semiotic choices that participants took to represent and communicate knowledge. Analysis of multimodal meaning making will focus on the semiotic choices associated with speech and slideshow design. In relation to speech, I focus on the social practices that shaped participants’ use of this semiotic mode. Analysis of slideshow design will focus on the use of layout, writing and visuals which will be examined through the descriptive framework offered by Kress and van Leeuwen (1996, 2006). Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) explore the semiotic resources mediating the use of visuals in contemporary western culture by building on SFL classical concern with ideational, interpersonal and textual metafunctions of linguistic texts and extending their use to the study of various visuals. For Kress and van Leeuwen, visuals “involve two kinds of participants, represented participants (the people, the places and things depicted in images) and interactive participants (the people who communicate with each other through images, the producers and viewers of images)” (2006, P. 114). They employ different

terminology to consider the simultaneous meanings previously introduced in SFL. They use ‘representational’ instead of ideational, ‘interactive’ instead of interpersonal and ‘compositional’ instead of textual. Each of these meanings employs specific resources to convey different aspects of meaning in visuals. While the authors’ framework entails elaborate terminology, I will only draw on specific semiotic resources which appear relevant to the purpose of this thesis.

Representational meaning is concerned with how represented participants are depicted in visuals whether they are things, concepts or human beings. Two patterns

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describe these participants. First, narrative representations portray participants in terms of what is happening between them, usually by employing a line that connects the portrayed participants or as Kress and van Leeuwen call it a ‘vector’. Second,

conceptual structures appear in visuals in which the connection between the represented participants is not based on the presence of a vector.

Interactive meaning is concerned with how visuals establish relations between represented participants and viewers. These relations are realized through choices in contact, distance and point of view. Contact refers to how a participant is shown looking directly or indirectly at the viewer where a direct gaze from a frontal angle is seen to suggest a form of demand from the viewer while the indirect look associated with an oblique angle suggests an offer of information to the viewer. The angles through which the represented participant in a visual is shown to the viewer is significant to explore possible meanings and effects. According to Kress and van Leeuwen, the “difference between the oblique and the frontal angle is the difference between detachment and involvement” (2006, p. 136). Distance is concerned with how close a participant in the visual appears to the viewer through the employed ‘size of frame’ which ranges from close-up to medium to longshot portrayal. Point of view refers to the angle through which the represented participants appear to the viewer and its implied suggestions of power and control.

Compositional meaning is realized through resources, such as information value, framing and modality. Information value of a visual is suggested by how elements of a semiotic entity are placed in relation to each other and the meaning potential associated with specific placements. For example, Kress and van Leeuwen connect a left-right placement of visual elements with a ‘given-new’ structure of information in which ‘given’ reflects what is already known by and shared with the viewer while the ‘new’ represents a challenge for the viewer in terms of being problematic and contestable (Jewitt & Oyama, 2001). Top-down placement of elements correspond to a meaning- potential of ideal-real in which the ‘ideal’ could potentially refer to “idealized or generalized essence of the information” while the ‘real’ is connected with presenting “more specific information ….more practically oriented information ….or more real information” (p. 148). Elements can be also placed in a central-marginal position to indicate elements’ significance.

Framing realizes compositional meaning in a semiotic entity through portraying participants as visually connected or disconnected in relation to each other. Different

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techniques are used to frame participants in visuals, such as the use of space and colours. Compositional meaning is also realized through modality which as a concept originated in SFL accounts to refer to “the truth value or credibility of (linguistically realized) statements about the world (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006, p. 155). According to van Leeuwen (2005, p. 160),

Modality’ is the social semiotic approach to the question of truth. It relates both to issues of representation – fact versus fiction, reality versus fantasy, real versus artificial, authentic versus fake – and to questions of social interaction, because the question of truth is also a social question – what is regarded as true in one social context is not necessarily regarded as true in others, with all the consequences that brings.

Visual modality can be looked at through examining specific gradable modality markers or parameters, including colour saturation, colour differentiation, colour modulation, contextualization, representation, depth, illumination and brightness (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006; van Leeuwen, 2005). These markers “may be amplified or reduced to different degrees, resulting in many possible modality configurations” which “cue viewers’ judgements of modality, of ‘as how real’ images (or parts of images) are to be taken” (van Leeuwen, 2005, p. 167).

van Leeuwen points out that there are four kinds of visual modality (p. 168-170): 1. Naturalistic modality is the most commonly known form of modality in which “the more an image of something resembles the way we would see that something if we saw it in reality, from a specific viewpoint and under specific conditions of illumination, the higher its modality” (p. 168).

2. Abstract modality is common in scientific and modern art contexts in which “visual truth is abstract truth”. Truth is dependent on how “an image represents the deeper ‘essence’ of what it depicts” and how “it represents the general pattern underlying superficially different specific instances” (p. 168).

3. Technological modality is concerned with how “visual truth is based on the practical usefulness of the image. The more an image can be used as a blueprint or aid for action, the higher its modality” (p. 168).

4. Sensory modality “is used in contexts where pleasure matters” and it is “realized by a degree of articulation which is amplified beyond the point of naturalism, so that sharpness, colour, depth, the play of light and shade, etc.

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become – from the point of view of naturalistic modality – ‘more than real’” (p. 170).

Despite the above classification, these types do not exist in isolation from each other. Visuals are likely to employ different modality configurations according to the needs of the meaning maker.