Abstracts - Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa

SONJA STARC, UNIVERSITY OF PRIMORSKAREADING MULTIMODAL TEXT EITHER WITH OR WITHOUT KNOWING THE THEORYThe production of multimodal texts (as defined by Kress and van Leeuwen 2005)has been widely expanded in all areas of our activities, nearly all genres (Martin,Rose 2008) can be construed by verbal and pictorial semiotic modes, from thenewspaper articles to text-books and scientific articles. Thus, a very primaryquestion arises: are the spontaneously acquired skills of reading multimodal texts,bearing in mind also human neurophysiology, sufficient enough as to make a personinto a competent and critical reader who can select from the different semioticresource systems, and be aware of ´a system of possible meanings and formstypically used to make meanings in particular contexts´ (Baldry, Thibault 2005: 18),or perhaps there is a need to teach/learn these competences in school, consideringthe theoretical concepts of the visual grammar. To try to find an explanation a studyhas been made among 224 students who had no previous knowledge ofmultimodality and were not trained to read and interpret multimodal texts.Students were given a multimodal newspaper article and asked to complete aquestionnaire checking their comprehension and eliciting their interpretation of thearticle. The paper presents the analysis of the study results which focuses on thefollowing issues: students´ reading paths, the roles of the pictorial, whetherstudents consider the image an inherent part of the text or not, the cohesiveelements linking the two semiotic systems, and the extent to which the gaze of therepresented participant in the pictorial (demand) influences students´ decoding ofthe verbal, i.e. the interaction of the two modes. In fact, the main topic discussed isthe students´ perception of the interpersonal metafunction in the analysedmultimodal text.ReferencesBaldry, Antony, Thibault, Paul J. (2005): Multimodal Transcription and Text Analysis. London, Oalville:Equinox.Jones, Carys, Ventola, Eija (Ed.) (2008): From Language to Multimodality. London, Oakville: Equinox.Kress, Gunter, van Leeuwen, Theo ( 7 2005): Reading Images. The Grammar of Visual Design. London, NewYork: Routledge.Martin, J. R., Rose, D. (2008): Genre Relations. London, Oakville: Equinox.Starc, Sonja (2008): Osnovnošolsko uèbeniško besedilo kot besedilo kolonija, sestavljeno iz besednih innebesednih znakov (Primary school text-book as colony and multimodal text). In: Sodobne strategije uèenjain pouèevanja (Modern strategies of learning and teaching). Ed.: Medved Udoviè, Cotiè, Cenciè. Koper:Univerza na Primorskem, Pedagoška fakulteta. 45-56.Van Leeuwen, Theo (2005): Introducing Social Semiotics. London, New York: Routledge.PAPER SESSION 9E - ROOM 5 - FRIDAY, 28 JULYISFC38 Book of Abstracts Page 180 Lisbon, July 2011