Session 4b: Creating Culture and Consciousness

3rd Global Conference

Tuesday 14th July 2009 – Thursday 16th July 2009
Mansfield College, Oxford

“This looks like a hat. I don’t know what it is.” Investigating pictorial literacy in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Katherine Arbuckle
University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa

The adult literacy rate in South Africa is contested, with official figures hovering around 85%, although some researchers argue that at least a third of the adult population are functionally illiterate. In this context, educational print materials rely heavily on graphic depictions to convey information, often with surprisingly little consideration of visual literacies affecting understanding. For example, comics are often assumed to be an effective, easy-to-read medium, but interpreting this genre demands complex conceptual processes and well-developed understanding of pictorial conventions from readers.

To maximise the potential value of educational print media in this and other development contexts, it is essential to find out which graphic styles work best to convey intended meanings, and what approach to content works the best to convey difficult concepts. Are iconic, ‘naturalistic’ depictions better than symbolic-abstract depictions? Is there a difference between pictorial literacy levels in rural and urban areas? Are general guidelines for illustrators and materials developers appropriate in the electronic era where diverse media abounds?

This paper describes a research project which used aspects of communication theory, specifically social semiotics applied to the visual mode, to assess the extent to which the visual portrayal of health information is understood by Zulu-speaking adults newly-enrolled in mother-tongue literacy classes. The investigation considered different illustrating styles and conventions, as well as different approaches to content, through individual interviews conducted in rural and urban areas of KwaZulu-Natal, where participants responded in their mother-tongue to a range of pictures. Participants viewed pictures only, without written text, in order to attempt an assessment of the pictorial mode of communication alone. The intention was to confirm or disprove existing (and dated) guidelines on illustrating for readers with limited exposure to educational media, and to offer insights for future practice in similar contexts.

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ABC Milwaukee: The Visual Culture Literacies of Growing up Urban
Laura Trafí-Prats
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Department of Visual Art, Art Education Section, USA

The paper reflects on how media education can act as an interpretative space for making multiple realities, forms of perception and knowledge available to young people (Buckhingham, 2003). It defines a conceptual framework for a model of critical media education and visual culture literacy operating in urban, working class, multi-ethnic landscapes where corporate and institutional designs often undermine children’s free circulation, exploration, and occupation of the streets (Mathews, 2003, Aitken, 2001).

This conceptual framework is projected into the interpretation of a case study centered on the experience of place-making and place-changing done in collaboration with a class of 3rd graders and their teacher in the city of Milwaukee. In a first stage of this project, children were introduced to different printed and videographic texts to learn about the art of micro-narrative. These texts were the result of a selection that intended to find exceptional examples that could be meaningful to a group of 9-year olds while challenging pre-conceived ideas about written language as the dominant vehicle of knowledge-making in the classroom. At the same time, the selected examples of texts represented children being narrative agents, visual creators, and active citizens. In a second stage of the project, children used pocket video-cameras to produce their own micro-stories expressing ideas of pleasure, injustice and change in relation to the urban spaces where their everyday lives unfold.

Finally the paper addresses the interpretation of children’s micro-narratives, and provides evidence that visual literacies are not a cognitive group of skills, but they are culturally constructed, and play an important role defining children’s lives today. They depend on the interaction with other forms of literacy already present in the classroom and the home, and on the meanings, interests, and forms of access that mediate their use. This interpretation will analyze how issues of point of view, voice, documentation, intergraphicality, address, context, conventions/rules, pleasure, place, and social difference are represented in children’s work.

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The Visual and Social Semiotics of Toilet Signs in Greece
Sofia Pantouvaki
Department of Theatre Studies, University of Peloponnese, Greece

This paper aims to explore the visual, cultural and social aspects of contemporary Greek toilet signs. The current study provides a critical visual analysis of the characteristics of toilet signs from several locations around Greece, used to signify men’s and women’s toilets. Specific images are examined to identify the styles of the visual language used, while the co-existence of visual elements and written text (words) is also explored in individual cases. The methodology used for the review of the case studies includes compositional interpretation and thematic analysis, through which a first account of the visual quality of Greek toilet signs today is provided.

Furthermore, this paper seeks to investigate the power of visual literacy in supporting and simplifying a simple everyday praxis, in a country with an uncommon language, as Greece not only has a complex language but also a unique alphabet. In studying the visual features of toilet signs around contemporary Greece, it is proved that different means of visual literacy are developed in the Greek mainland, the islands and the Greek capital, Athens, according to whom the signs are addressed to or –at times- neglecting the audience the signs are received by. These local and/or global cultural characteristics of the visual elements in question and the potential interpretations of their visual language are examined from the perspective of social semiotics, as they are directly linked with a basic human practice.