01 Andrew van der Vlies

201 Pages·2008·1.04 MB·English

MAPPING THE TERRAIN 1
MULTILITERACIES AND MULTIMODALITY IN
ENGLISH IN EDUCATION IN AFRICA:
MAPPING THE TERRAIN
Pippa Stein and Denise Newfield
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
T
his special edition (the first special edition devoted to English in
education in the history of English Studies in Africa) addresses issues
of English in education in Africa from a particular perspective: namely,
‘multiliteracies’ and ‘multimodality’. In this introductory essay, we introduce
multiliteracies and the related field of multimodal social semiotics, make
connections between them and English in education in Africa, and introduce
the papers in this special edition.1
The term, ‘multiliteracies’, originated in an article published by an
international group of language and literacy scholars in the 1996 Spring edition
of the Harvard Educational Review. The article, entitled, ‘A Pedagogy of
Multiliteracies’ (New London Group 1996; Cope and Kalantzis 2000) outlined
a specific pedagogic framework for rethinking the future of language and
literacy education within the context of major social change: the globalisation
of communication and labour markets, a rapidly changing English language,
unprecedented technological change, cultural and linguistic diversity, and new
forms of global citizenship (see Cope and Kalantzis this volume). In the
context of global cultural and linguistic diversity, there are multiple literacies
produced through multiple media and communication channels, including
face-to-face communication. The concept of ‘multiliteracies’ as a more
general term, assumes multiple worlds connected in multiple ways
(Lotherington 2007). It has been taken up by numerous scholars to challenge
the idea of a singular, universal literacy restricted to monolingual, monocultural
and rule-governed standard forms of language (Gee 1996; Street 1995; Pahl
and Rowsell 2005).
2 ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA 49.1
Linked to multiliteracies is the concept of multimodality. Multimodality
refers to the combination of different semiotic modes – for example, language,
image and music – in a communicative artefact or event (van Leeuwen 2005:
281). A mode is understood to be a fully semiotically articulated means of
representation and communication (Kress 2000: 185). New communication
technologies are multimodal, combining audio, print, image, animation and
interactivity. Whilst digital technologies are discussed in some papers in this
volume (Cope and Kalantzis; Brenner and Andrew), the orientation of most
of the papers is towards the multimodality of African representational and
communication forms, including live performance, the aesthetics of the body,
music, print, image and multilingualism.
The dominant theoretical paradigm within the field of multimodality and
education is multimodal social semiotics, which concerns itself with how
human beings use different modes of communication, such as speech, writing,
image, gesture and sound, as resources to represent or make meanings in the
social world (Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996, 2001; Kress 1997; Van Leeuwen
2005). From a multimodal social semiotic perspective, teaching and learning
are multimodal: they happen mainly through the modes of speech, writing,
action, gesture, image and space, all of which work in different ways with
different effects, to create multi-layered, communicational ensembles. These
ensembles are never neutral: they are meaning-bearing signs which are
produced in particular contexts of power, culture and history. Together, the
linked concepts of multiliteracies and multimodality constitute a new way
of conceptualising how teaching and learning occurs in contemporary
classrooms.
ENGLISH IN EDUCATION IN AFRICA
With the rise of English as a world language and lingua franca spoken by over
one billion people (Crystal 1997; Graddol 1998; Jenkins 2006), the field of
English in education is rapidly expanding. In the International Handbook of
English Language Teaching, Cummins and Davison (2007) show how the
multiplicity of labels used to describe programmes, learners or teachers of
English highlights how the English language intersects with societal power
relations in multiple ways, defining the identities of millions of English
language learners across the world, for example, English as a second language
(ESL), English as an additional language (EAL), or limited English proficiency
(LEP). In Africa, rich in multilingualism, English is spoken as a home language,
a second language, a third or fourth language and a foreign language. For
example, English is a third language for many African speakers living in
MAPPING THE TERRAIN 3
countries where French is widely used as a second language (Mozambique
and Mauritius) and also for those children from countries where English is
used at an institutional level, but who already speak two languages before
they go to school (for example, Nigeria). In Uganda, where the future is
‘inextricably linked to the English Language’ (Kendrick et al this volume),
English is the language of instruction from Grade 4 onwards, in a context
where English is a third and fourth language for the majority of learners. In
South Africa, where English is one of eleven official languages, it is a home
language, an additional language and, in some remote communities, a foreign
language for the majority of learners.
When referring to English in education in Africa, we are concerned with
two aspects: firstly, the teaching and learning of English as a subject, like
mathematics or history, in a school or university curriculum; secondly, the
use of English as a language or medium of teaching and learning. The use
of English as a medium of teaching and learning in post-colonial Africa has
been fraught with controversy. Issues of power, policy and choice of medium
are clearly part of the policy-practice nexus in education and impact profoundly
on how students learn and construct their identities. They also affect
curriculum, pedagogy and assessment practices. There is a substantial
scholarship which addresses the tensions created by the imposition of ex-
colonial languages, such as English and French, as languages of education in
Africa, within the context of the large number of local, indigenous languages
in many parts of the continent (Rubagumya 1990; Bamgbose 1991; Phillipson
1992; Alexander 2000). Many papers in this volume engage with what it means
to learn English within the context of local African languages. Issues of
linguistic inequality, produced by the fact that European languages have
become hegemonic in Africa, lead to what Phillipson (1992) calls ‘linguicism’
– a political and economic system which favours and privileges those who
speak what have been deemed the ‘elite’ languages (such as English), and
discriminates against those who speak indigenous languages. Even in South
Africa, which has a progressive multilingual language-in-education policy in
place, English has been called the ‘Mercedes Benz’ of South African languages
by high school students and is the favoured language of the new black elite
class (Kapp 2006; McKinney 2007). The effects of using English, rather
than indigenous languages, as the medium of teaching and learning in Africa
has led to enormous inequalities in the education system for the majority of
children and families who use local languages at home and who do not have
access to the material and symbolic resources of English. Poverty and
marginalisation from networks of power play a major role in this exclusion.
In addition, schools are poorly equipped in relation to English: there are few
4 ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA 49.1
textbooks and reading materials available, and teachers themselves are often
not fully proficient in the language. We have to ask the question: Is this the
best policy option and what are the alternatives? Who benefits and who is
disadvantaged? According to Obondo, ‘the use of ex-colonial languages has
contributed to a deep crisis in the education for youth in Africa’ (2007:41).
This claim is born out by Nyirahuku and Hoenig’s paper in this volume which
addresses the alienation felt by Rwandan youth in relation to the imposition
of English literary canonical texts in the English classroom. It is also the
experience of Soweto high school students described in Newfield and
Maungedzo’s paper: the students were so disaffected with the English poetry
syllabus and how it was being taught that the teaching of poetry had been
abandoned at the school.
Multilingualism as a semiotic resource is central to the concepts of
multimodality and multiliteracies (Cope and Kalantzis this volume). Language
is a primary mode of communication and, in the real world, outside the
artificiality of classrooms, people draw on whatever semiotic resources they
need to communicate their meanings. In multilingual communities in Africa,
people have multiple language systems to draw upon, as they move fluidly
across languages, genres, discourses, modes and varieties. Whilst the English
language is the focus of this special edition, we do not want to obscure the
fact that the majority of learners of English in Africa already have one or
more languages from the home in which they are orally proficient (but not
necessarily literate). These connections between the concepts of
multimodality, multiliteracies and multilingualism are explored in a number
of papers where the study of English intersects with ‘the local’ (Canagarajah
2005) in forms of indigenous languages, cultural forms and knowledges (Cope
and Kalantzis this volume; Janks; Kendrick et al; Newfield and Maungedzo;
Reed; Archer).
Implicit in this special edition is a range of questions including: What are
some of the ideological and practical challenges facing English in education
in Africa, at this time of local and global connectedness? What is the
relationship between English and African multilingualism in English Language
Teaching (ELT)? Is it possible to teach English from a critical perspective in
a way that acknowledges its possibilities as well as its neo-colonial
dimensions? What kinds of pedagogies, curricula and assessment practices
are most equitable and responsive to learners’ language needs, interests and
identities and how can these be used to develop English language and literacy
competence? What is the relationship between English literary texts and
popular culture in English curricula? How do dominant knowledge forms
and literacy practices, such as western forms of English academic literacy
MAPPING THE TERRAIN 5
and reasoning practices, intersect with local knowledges in Africa, such as
African multilingualism, performance and spirituality (in all their diversity)?
What is the contribution of English, multiliteracies and multimodality to HIV/
AIDS education?
A PEDAGOGY OF MULTILITERACIES
The rationale for ‘A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies’ is explored in this edition
by guest writers Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, members of the New London
Group (Cope and Kalantzis 2000). Their paper presents an historical overview
of the major shifts in representational forms across three historical moments:
oral/first languages or cultures; the early developments of alphabetic writing
culminating in mass print in the 15th century; and the emergence of
photographic and electronic forms of communication in the 20th and 21st
centuries. Their argument is that each ‘representational means’ reflects and
creates new kinds of thinking (epistemes) and new ways of being in the world
(lifeworlds). These changes have profound consequences for literacy and
language education. Central to their paper is the idea that after hundreds of
years of print dominance in the world, the communicational landscape begins
to shift in the 20th century on account of a ‘series of transformations in the
means of production and reproduction of meaning’ towards more varied, hybrid
forms of representation and communication. The ‘new synaesthesia’,
accelerated by digital technology brings image, font, and many forms of sound
into fluid and integrated forms of meaning-making and communication which
accompany a ‘new logic of identity’ that defies the neatly homogenising
efforts of the nation-state. They claim that we are returning to ‘a deep logic
of divergence and diversity,’ and with this ‘a fluidity of signifier-signified
relations not witnessed since we spoke first languages’.
‘A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies’ is concerned with building learning
conditions ‘leading to full and equitable social participation’ (Cope and
Kalantzis 2000: 9). With its orientation towards social justice and equity in
literacy education, ‘Multiliteracies’ provides an appealing framework for
teachers, designers of teaching materials and curriculum developers in the
postcolonial world. Its basic principle of plurality opens the space for
indigenous, local epistemologies, languages and literatures to co-exist
alongside standard English and canonical English literature and culture. It
creates a frame for popular culture to exist alongside high culture in
educational contexts. Several papers in this edition (Newfield and Maungedzo;
Archer; Janks; Kendrick et al) demonstrate that through such processes of
6 ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA 49.1
co-existence, the transformation of English in Africa continues, drawing on
its colonial past and its postcolonial present to create new forms and meanings.
‘A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies’ is also a theory of pedagogy based on the
view that the human mind is embodied, situated and social. This pedagogy is
an integration of four factors: ‘Situated Practice’, ‘Overt Instruction’, ‘Critical
Framing’ and ‘Transformed Practice’. Cope and Kalantzis explain these
components in their paper and Brenner and Andrew critically reflect on how
they applied this framework to a visual literacy course for university students.
MULTIMODAL SOCIAL SEMIOTICS AND MULTIMODAL
PEDAGOGIES
In her book, The Multiple Modes of Communication, anthropologist Ruth
Finnegan (2002) discusses a ‘fresh view of human communication’ which
encompasses the varied modes though which humans communicate and the
multi-sensory resources we draw on to interconnect with others. Finnegan
critiques dominant models which view communication as a mental, cognitive
activity and challenges these models for ‘stopping at the neck’ by equating
communication with verbal language only (in its spoken and written forms)
and for therefore representing a ‘narrow view on communication, and with it,
on human life.’ This logocentrism or ‘logo-essentialism’(Shortis and Jewitt
2005) has become associated with grand narratives of modernization, western
forms of post-enlightenment rationality, objectivity and scientific thinking,
alphabetic forms and writing, leaving behind the more ‘primitive’ ritual,
tradition, emotion and magic (Finnegan 27). Bakhtin, Birdwhistle, Bauman,
Hymes and Austin have shown how communication is communicatively
constituted, produced, and reproduced by communicative acts. Society is
constituted not as a predetermined entity over and above individuals, but
emergent in and through their actions, emotions and experiences, within social
worlds which they are part of and which they constitute. This signifies a
paradigm shift from a view of human communication as static and passive, to
one in which humans are active, interconnecting agents, who make and remake
meanings within and in response to their affective and social worlds:
Communicating is envisaged as creative human process … it
encompasses the many modes of human interacting and living,
both near and distant – through smells, sounds, touches, sights,
movements, embodied engagements and material objects. These
interconnecting processes are necessary ones for collective
human life (Finnegan 5).
MAPPING THE TERRAIN 7
Multimodal social semiotics holds a similar view of human communication.
From a social semiotic perspective, communication as sign production,
‘reception’ and transformation, can be understood as a product of people’s
active engagement with the semiotic resources available to them at a particular
moment in a specific socio-cultural context (Kress 1997). The term,
‘semiotic resource’ is key: its origins lie in the work of Halliday who argued
that the grammar of a language is not a code, but a ‘resource for making
meanings’ (Halliday 1978:192) This perspective has been elaborated to take
account of modes and systems of making meaning other than speech and
writing including the resources of music/sound (van Leeuwen 1999), action
(Martinec 2000; Kress et al 2001), visual communication (Kress and van
Leeuwen 1996) and their arrangement as multimodal ensembles (Kress and
van Leeuwen 2001; van Leeuwen 2005).
The application of this theory of signs to learning has been variously called
‘multimodal literacy’, ‘multimodal semiotics’ and ‘a multimodal social
semiotic approach’ to learning. It assumes that pedagogical environments
are semiotic environments: teachers and learners are constantly engaged in
reading and creating signs across a range of genres, modes and discourses.
Sign-making occurs in all learning environments, in and out of school, and
across all school subjects. Signs are always conjunctions of meaning and
form. They are never neutral but socially and culturally produced and motivated
– meaning is always made and read in culture. Pedagogic processes can be
understood as the selection and configuration of the semiotic resources
available in the classroom. This includes the designing of texts as Reed (this
volume) demonstrates in her analysis of Grade 9 English textbooks in South
Africa. Even in the English classroom where common sense would have it
that language is what really matters, teaching and learning are multimodal
(Kress et al 2005; Jewitt 2006; Bhattacharya et al 2007). The classroom is
itself a multimodal place through its visual displays and arrangement of
furniture in space that realises particular discourses of subject English (Jewitt
2005). The modes of speech and writing in school English are accompanied,
amongst others, by image, gesture, gaze, movement and posture. All of these
modes shape the production of curriculum knowledge and pedagogic practices
that lead to learning. Each mode provides teachers and students with a range
of semiotic resources from which to choose, and the choice from these
available resources is made on the basis of the sign-maker’s interests:
Signs arise out of our interest at a given moment, when we
represent those features of the object which we regard as
defining of that object at that moment…This interest is always
8 ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA 49.1
complex and has physiological, psychological, emotional,
cultural, and social origins. It gets its focus from factors in the
environment in which the sign is being made. (Kress 1997:11)
The notion of ‘design’ is fundamental both to a social semiotic approach to
learning and to ‘A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies’:
The starting point for the Multiliteracies framework is the
notion that knowledge and meaning are historically and socially
located and produced, that they are ‘designed’
artefacts.…Design is a dynamic process…of subjective self-
interest and transformation. (Cope and Kalantzis this volume37)
Teachers and students are designers of meaning. Meaning-making is about
choosing and assembling resources in relation to individual desire as well as
perceptions of audience and context (Archer this volume). The idea of design
means that people choose how to represent meaning from a range of possible
options. These options are continuously shaped within the history of a culture,
as well as by an individual’s relationship to identity and history. How people
represent their meanings may be limited by the semiotic resources available,
what Kress (1997) calls ‘what is to hand’, and by students’ competence in
design. These choices communicate important information to teachers about
students’ identities and learning and have implications for pedagogical,
curriculum and assessment practices. Brenner and Andrew analyse students’
choices in responding to texts and how they design meanings in their creative
production of multimodal texts. Archer (this volume) examines how university
students express ‘interest’ through available resources, what resources they
bring to academic and disciplinary genres and how this form of cultural capital
(Bourdieu 1991) can be incorporated into a curriculum which is more
‘responsive’ to students’ needs. All these analyses trace identity and social
practice in the materiality of texts (Pahl and Rowsell 2006:2).
Since 2000, the field of multimodal semiotics in education has developed
substantially. Applying a multimodal analysis or ‘lens’ to the range of texts
produced in learning environments gives us valuable insights into how learners
use different semiotic resources to interpret learning activities and to
formulate their relation to objects, phenomena and experiences (van Leeuwen
2000). English in Urban Classrooms (Kress et al 2005) is a multimodal
study of English classrooms in inner London. This study asks: How is English
made? What is it like? How is it experienced when it appears in actual
classrooms shaped by new curriculum policy, the school’s response to that
MAPPING THE TERRAIN 9
policy, the variety of department traditions in the school, the social and
geographical environment in which the school operates, the kinds of students
who come to the school, and the different histories and professional trainings
of the teachers?
…the English classroom is about meaning…the social
participants in the construction of the entities in the English
classroom have an effect on the shape of the entity, a situation
that cannot readily be imagined in subjects such as mathematics,
science, geography and others…In the counter-posing of
science and English, we posit a re-emergence of a split between
a world of ‘fact’ and a world of ‘value’ ….(Kress et al 2005:5)
Whilst previous studies of the English classroom have focused on the role
of ‘talk’ and on language in its written and spoken form, the above study pays
attention to all the culturally shaped resources through which the subject is
realized, including image, gesture, layout, writing and speech. The importance
of the above study is not only in its findings but in its methodological
framework: it presents a multimodal perspective as a new methodology or
‘way of looking’ at subject English. In a comparative study of the construction
of the subject English in classrooms across Delhi, London and Johannesburg,
Bhattacharya et al (2007) apply a similar multimodal methodology to
investigating the textual cycle as a sign of the policy-practice nexus in these
three cities.
The terms, ‘A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies’, ‘multiliteracies’ and
‘multimodal pedagogies’ are used in this volume with some slipperiness.
Obviously, there is overlap between them but we would like to distinguish
between ‘A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies’ and ‘multimodal pedagogies’. ‘A
Pedagogy of Multiliteracies’ refers to the New London Group’s pedagogical
framework (Situated Practice; Overt Instruction; Critical Framing;
Transformed Practice). A number of authors in this edition use the term
‘multimodal pedagogies’ to describe pedagogies which work across semiotic
modes (Kendrick et al; Archer; Newfield and Maungedzo; Janks). The term
‘multimodal pedagogies’ has been used to refer to curriculum, pedagogy and
assessment practices which focus on mode as a defining feature of
communication in learning environments (Stein and Newfield 2004; Stein
2007). In other words, there is a recognition that all acts of communication
in classrooms are multimodal: there is no monomodal communication. A
mode is a social semiotic resource: modes are the effect of the work of
culture in shaping materials into resources for meaning-making. Modes have
10 ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA 49.1
grammars: they have characteristic forms, affordances and distinct ways of
interacting with one another. Some modes are more effective than other modes
for certain kinds of representational work.
Multimodal pedagogies acknowledge learners as agentive, resourceful
and creative meaning-makers who communicate using the communicative
potential and multiple resources of their bodies and of their environment to
interconnect. Learners engage with different modes differently: they have
different relationships, histories and competencies in relation to modes. In
multimodal pedagogies, there is a conscious awareness of the relationship
between modes, learning and identity. As Millard points out, texts have to be
understood as multimodal to acquire their full meaning (2006). Attending to
the full ensemble of communicative modes that are involved in classrooms
enables a rich view of the complex ways in which policy and curriculum is
mediated and articulated through classroom practices and the part played by
culture, language and identity in this process.
MULTILITERACIES, MULTIMODALITY AND BORDER CROSSINGS
Numerous literacy researchers and educators (Heath 1983, Hull and Schultz
2002, Lankshear and Knobel 2003, Street 2005, Pahl and Rowsell 2005) are
critical of the narrowness of what counts as learning and communication in
contemporary classrooms. They argue for more ‘border crossings’ (Giroux
1994) between formal, institutional learning and learning in everyday settings.
Teachers are being called upon to be more culturally responsive to the worlds
that their students experience outside of the classroom. Street sees the
differences between supported learning and everyday learning, and between
literacy-in-education and literacy-in-use, as being on a continuum rather than
a binary opposition:
… a social practice approach to literacy-in-use pushes us
towards recognizing the considerable overlap across these
boundaries as people, texts and practices track through different
settings and scenes: children move between home and school;
teachers and facilitators bring ‘sedimented’ features of their
background and ‘habitus’ to bear on their educational practice;
schools and other formal institutions of education bring in
moving-image media, performances, and cultural models
outside of the school walls; while projects involving literacy,
rap music, and oral and visual performance may bring in features
of schooled education (Street 2005:2).