Promotion of Social Commentary and Visual Literacy: A Multimodal Content Analysis of Postmodern Wordless Picture Books

• In Event: AERA Graduate Student Research in Progress Roundtable Session Three
  In Roundtable Session: Storytelling: Narrative Analysis of the Experiences of Students of Color and Critical Exploration of Postmodern Picture Books (Table 16)

Abstract

"Education needs complex examples of how to engage with ambiguity through visual literacy, particularly in this fast-paced, post-truth world (Mihailidis & Viotty, 2017). Postmodern picturebooks are an untapped genre of texts ripe for this purpose. Although this genre is considered to have revolutionized the rules and boundaries of picturebooks, redefining the way image is used in a more uncertain and ambiguous way to provoke reflection and criticism from readers (Pantaleo & Sipe, 2008), we know less about how visual texts in such books influences on the reading process (Sweet & Snow, 2003) and, more importantly, how it, as a complex text, dispels the myth that visual texts are only appropriate for developing readers (Serafini, 2014) and can be used with a wider range of student populations and facilitate their engagement with social commentary.
In this study, by using multimodal content analysis (Serafini, & Reid, 2019), I examine the characteristics and visual textual structures of postmodern wordless picturebooks not only from the perspective of art and visual design (i.e., ""how something is said"") but also from the perspective of critical literacy (i.e., ""what is said;"" Albers, 2013, p. 95). This study suggests that postmodern characteristics add to the complexity of texts and invite the reader into texts worlds in potent ways. The books provide readers with visual environments for inquiry, participation and relationship as they navigate complexity through the use of imagination as an integral part of their sense-making. In addition, such books are highly sociopolitical in that they involve a highly critical epistemology that resists grand narratives (Lyotard, 1984) and strongly questions the ""dominant ideologies"" (Butler, 2002, p. 29). These characteristics prompt readers to engage in social commentary and deep dialogicality with and within the text world."

Author

• Mengying Xue, Purdue University
  Presenting Author