Multimodal Academic Literacy: Exploring the Valued Gaze in a Colour Semiotics Module

Abstract

This chapter addresses the challenges of developing students’ academic writing skills in an ICLHE module on colour theory, meaning and practices, offered as part of the writing programme at the National University of Singapore. An aim of the module is to develop students’ literacy and critical thinking through the analysis of the role of colour in the functionality and meanings constructed by various designed works (Kress and Leeuwen in Reading images: The grammar of visual design. Routledge, 2006). This chapter will describe the module, and will focus on a lens paper, an assignment which requires students to analyse a given designed work (for example, a cover from a magazine, a film poster, a printed advertisement) using a social semiotics framework to describe and interpret colour meaning within its social and cultural context (Kress and Leeuwen in Visual Communication 1:343–368, 2002; Van Leeuwen in The language of colour: An introduction. Routledge, pp. 55–70, 2011). The task requires students to use technical descriptive language, with a focus on colour, and to explain whether the designer has achieved the intended purpose of the work, leaning on relevant literature. Students may also argue that colour communicates more implicit meanings on a range of social issues, or consolidates stereotypes related to, for example, gender (Koller in Visual Communication 7:395–423, 2008), or race (Hunter in Sociological Inquiry 68:517–535, 1998). Drawing on the Legitimation Code Theory concept of gaze, and analysis of students’ assignments, the chapter maps different ways students engage with the artefacts, and the theoretical lens.