Black Girl Multimodal Discourse Analysis (Poster 4)

• In Event: Imagining Black Worlds: Emphasizing Black Methodologies in Reparative Educational Inquiry

Abstract

Multimodal approaches to Discourse Analysis facilitate opportunities to denounce forms of analysis that focus on script and dialogue alone, and challenge us to understand varied modes of communication. Drawing from Frances E. W. Harper’s 1892 novel Iola Leroy, literary scholar P. Gabrielle Foreman describes the term “reading aright” (1997). She aptly explains that “reading script [alone] does not ensure literacy” (332). Wright (2016) furthers this argument, stating, “One must read very carefully, with the ‘eagle eyes’ …in order to uncover the intention of the writer. Texts must be read through and under the lines. In some cases they must be read for what is not being said as much as for what is being said” (Wright, 2016, p. 8). Reading Black girls’ multimodal renderings requires reading texts “aright,” understanding these multimodal renderings not only from the nexus of race, gender, and class, but also through the lens of age, place, embodiment, and being, identifying both what is stated and what is not, which unearths Black girls’ developmental, social, and otherwise worlds. I highlight the discourse present in Black girl images and image-making and argue that Black Girl Multimodal Discourse Analysis allows for this kind of understanding and draws on Black discursive practices (Smitherman, 1986; Toliver, 2021), including literacies and discursive articulations of Black Girlhood (Muhammad & Haddix, 2016. In this poster session, I outline the phases of analysis for Black Girl Multimodal Discourse Analysis and provide examples from a study conducted with Black adolescent girls in a writing collaborative focused on Black Girl self-love.

Author

• Autumn A. Griffin, Georgia State University