Words may not be Playing the role as a Second Fiddle Afterall

The article, “Multimodality, ‘reading’ and literacy’, written by C. Lewitt seems to centre on the dwindling state of the mode, writing, from a vital “must-have” position in meaning creation during its days of glory to that of a “supporting role” now.

The above is made palpable as Lewitt made an observation of two students interacting with a multimodal text that teaches the students the scientific process of the transformation of ‘liquid to solid’. The students were apparently oblivious to the linguistic text (“liquid to solid) that was stated in the screen they were looking at, & they were clueless about what they seeing at the centre of the screen. In other words, they had no idea what they were looking at even when there were linguistic texts that states ‘liquid to solid’ at one part of the screen. This, Lewitt comments, shows how “[s]tudents often privilege one mode over another when they read multimodal texts. In this case, the visual mode is privileged over the linguistic one.

Aside from the aforesaid, Lewitt also remarks that linguistic texts are seemingly used for minor purposes nowadays as they are often used for labelling. I would say this might be so when we are talking about multimodal texts which are catered for texts which are not very “academic”. In this case, “academic” refers to texts which are of tertiary level and higher. Think of the innumerable canons there are in the repertoire areas of studies in the world – Law, Literature, Business, Philosophy, Psychology, Anthology, Anthropology, amongst others – & we will realise that most of the contents in these canons are made up of a mostly words, rather than any other modes. So, if we consider this fact, we will probably see that words are still very much the most utilised, desired and respected mode when it comes to texts at the higher level of the literary world.

I suppose if the other modes are looming around in the higher level of the literary world, it would be due to the areas of studies which require them, such as Music, Art, Visual Art, and the likes. Other than that, canons are usually dominated by words.

To put it crudely, and not to sound condescending at the same time, any other modes, other than words, may be considered, by some, to be meant for amateur readers.

Just to lay a disclaimer in case I get lambasted for making the above statement, I am writing this as an observer; not an advocate. So, I do not endorse everything I state in this entry. These are just observations.

Moving on to the implications for the pedagogic aspect, I suggest that teachers should inform students right from the beginning that words are still very much desired and respected as one moves higher in the academic realm. This is to get students mentally and physically prepared that they might be in contact with more words and less images as they progress academically. This is also in accordance to what Lewitt states in his article that it seems there is this pattern of the reduction in the amount of images as one progresses higher academically. Thus, we can try to accustom students to this pattern by reducing the amount of images and presenting them with more words as the time goes. This, I think, will be beneficial to them in time to come.