43 (2014) • Heft 2 © 2014 Narr Francke Attempto Verlag A LICE C HIK * Visual Literacy Abstract. Since the seminal paper by the N EW L ONDON G ROUP (1996), there is a strong push to expand literacy to multiliteracies. This is a movement to acknowledge the impacts of the changing landscapes of language use and communication channels on literacy conceptualization and development. This paper will discuss one particular aspect of multiliteracies: the emphasis on the visual in texts. Infographics, a growing popular genre in media, will be used to illustrate visual literacy in operation. 1. Introduction The ability to read and write, or the definition of literacy, appears to be deceitfully simple, especially in the dominance of printed media era. It has traditionally been decoded as the ability to read and write the linguistic component in texts. And literacy was thought to be a relatively static condition that could be addressed by instructions and educational policies. However, this conceptualization has been challenged since the late 1970s by the impact of technology on communication, most notably from page to screen (cf. T HE N EW L ONDON G ROUP 1996; S NYDER 1998). In this article, the definition of literacy will be introduced, and expanded to include visual literacy, and its impact on foreign language learning. Literacy has traditionally been understood as the ability to read and write (cf. O LSON 1993) and is viewed as a physiological and cognitive process of skills acquisition. When literacy is perceived as a process of skills acquisition, it has also frequently been framed as a neutral process that can be universally taught. Consequently, the product of such process, literacy, is a dichotomous condition between literate and illiterate (M CKAY 1993). However, this conceptualization of ‘autonomous’ acquisition of literacy through education did not take into consideration of inequality in social and cultural structures (cf. S TREET 1995, 2000). In opposition, S TREET (1995, 2000) proposed an ‘ideological’ model that takes into account the impact of social and cultural power structures. From this perspective, literacy development does not just happen in the vacuum of schooling and educational policies. Literacy development is as relevant to being situated in specific social and cultural communities and practices as being * Address for correspondence: A LICE C HIK , Doctor of Philosophy, Senior Lecturer in The School of Education, Macquarie University, N ORTH R YDE , NSW 2109, Australia. E-Mail: alice.chik@gmail.com Research areas: New media literacy, literacy study, and popular culture in second language education. 44 Alice Chik 43 (2014) • Heft 2 taught in school. The inclusion of functional literacy and social relevancy as dimensions to understanding literacy as ‘a set of social practices that exploit the affordances of writing for particular ends’ situates literacy as a dynamic construct rather than a mere skill set (cf. O LSON 2006: 177). The conceptualization of foreign language literacy is further complicated by references to first language literacy: at which point is a foreign language learner considered to be literate, in the first or second or third language? Is literacy in a foreign language the ability to read and write fluently or the ability to operate in a particular language? (cf. M CKAY 1993). The blurry definition of literacy is further complicated by advancement in communication technology. The use of the Internet has a fundamental impact on conceptualizing literacy in two dimensions: from word to image and from page to screen. Even in traditional print media like newspapers and magazines, we are seeing a growing proportion of the visual to texts. L EMKE (1998: 283) asserts that literacy is “a set of cultural competencies for making socially recognizable meanings by the use of particular material technologies”. As suggested, literacy needs to be rethought as a social phenomenon; and because the inherent nature of new technology use will bring out the “local diversity and global connectedness” (N EW L ONDON G ROUP 1996: 64), literacy needs to be reconceptualised in its full multimodal forms. The change in medium from page to screen does not simply imply the transfer of reading and writing skills from page to the computer screen, but it is a radical rethinking of the ways emerging technologies change the reading and writing processes (cf. K RESS 2003). As K RESS (2003) argues, the shift from words to images is not simply a translation process, to use a metaphor, but a transduction, “the move of semiotic material from one mode to another” (B EZEMER / K RESS 2008: 169). This shift from pure textual to multimodal in digital communication also requires users to combine semiotic resources for new creative expression (B ARTON / L EE 2013). However, this “turn to the visual” (K RESS 1998: 56) is not something totally new, as S TÖCKL (2004: 9) describes multimodality as “the late discovery of the obvious” further arguing that purely linguistic texts are the exceptions, rather than the norms. 2. Visual literacy All written texts are visually designed (cf. N EW L ONDON G ROUP 1996; S TÖCKL 2004: 19), texts can acquire ‘image qualities’ through typography and layout. For instance, readers have no doubt that it is easy to tell the difference between a ‘serious’ broadsheet from a tabloid newspaper simply by looking at the amount of texts and photographs, the layout, and the typography. A Google Image search for the front page of The Guardian, a broadsheet, and The Sun, a tabloid, will yield two very different types of visual images. The print version of The Guardian is text heavy with usually only one news photograph, while there is usually only a simple headline with a large photograph in The Sun. The density of texts, or the amount of words, on the front page can be an indicator of the direction of, or the lack of, journalism of a newspaper. By the same Visual Literacy 45 43 (2014) • Heft 2 token, readers also expect fashion magazines to be formatted differently from financial magazines. Textual density is not the only indicator. At university, one of the instructions that teachers frequently give to students is not to submit their assignments in Comic Sans or cursive fonts, because they either show a sense of ‘not being serious about the assignment’ and irrelevance, as in the case of Comic Sans; or it is difficult to read, as in the cases with all cursive fonts. However, can a typeface really change our perception of the quality of an assignment? A Google search of the question yields more than seven million results ranging from news reports by the BBC and Huffington Post to typeface enthusiast discussion groups to professional advices. At university, the formatting of assignments and dissertations, and in particular postgraduate dissertations, is serious enough a matter to warrant the issuing of official guide to dissertation submission. Surveying dissertation submission guides may find slight differences to formatting, but they all serve to ensure that the dissertations submitted look like dissertations, rather than say, textbooks or comic books. These very simple examples highlight several different modes which are influencing how the readers are reading. Simple formatting requests from the publisher can create a new visual interpretation, as K RESS (1998: 56) suggests that when the possibilities to manipulate visual components like font-types and size and layout through technologies, even though “the major element, quantitatively speaking, is writing, its visual aspects are more in the foreground”. This ‘pictorial turn’ or visual turn (cf. M ITCHELL 1995) is not something new or confined to contemporary culture, M ITCHELL (2008) uses the invention of photography to demonstrate that such a social and cultural re-emphasis surfaced when a new technology of reproduction became available. When visual aspects are placed in the foreground in the digital age, then what counted as visual literacy? As aforementioned, literacy has traditionally been framed as a binary dichotomy of either being literate or illiterate. The N EW L ONDON G ROUP (1996) criticized this restriction as “formalized, monolingual, monocultural, and rulegoverned forms of language” (p. 61), and chose “multiliteracies” to reflect the growing diversity in literacy conceptualization due to “multiplicity of communication channels and media, and the increasing saliency of cultural and linguistic diversity” (p. 63). The N EW L ONDON G ROUP argues for a pedagogy that includes language and other modes of representation which engage learners to remake the meaning for situated political, social and cultural purposes. Different modes of meaning representation mentioned by the group include linguistic, visual, audio, gestural, spatial, and multimodal. Visual meanings refer to images, page layouts and screen formats, which all embody the different uses of visual grammars. Take magazine reading as an example, the understanding of only the linguistic meanings on a magazine page would not have provided the full enjoyment of the magazine. And the visual grammars employed by a magazine will vary according to their social and cultural content, which explains the visual differences between fashion magazines and news magazines. It is not only magazines that employ visuals to convey messages, B EZEMER and K RESS (2008) found that there has been a much greater use of visual elements in English language textbooks between 46 Alice Chik 43 (2014) • Heft 2 1935 and 2005. The visual elements are not limited to illustrated images and photographs, but also typography and spacing. It is not only with English language textbooks, the changes of visual representations in science textbooks have also pointed to the need to address the issue of visual literacy in education (cf. K RESS 1998, 2005; L EMKE 1998). What is visual literacy? M ITCHELL (2008: 13-14) distinguishes between ‘visual competence’ and ‘visual literacy’, which is a “connoisseurship: rich, highly cultivated, and trained experiences and techniques of visual observation”. To understand this term, we have to understand the multimodal perspectives on literacy. The approach to multimodality in the domains of New Literacy Studies derives from the work of Michael H ALLIDAY (1978). From this perspective, language and language use is the product of the constant shaping in its use by people in particular social and cultural settings to realize their purposes. The social contexts and purposes for making meaning of texts are shaped by the readers’ social and cultural knowledge and experiences. Social semiotics expands this perspective to other resources for representation, or modes, for their use in communication. A mode is a “socially and culturally shaped resource for meaning making” (B EZEMER / K RESS 2008: 171). K ALANTZIS [et al.] (2010: 66) extend visual representation to include “still or moving image, sculpture, craft (representing meaning to another); view, vista, scene, perspective (representing meaning to oneself)”. J EWITT and K RESS (2010) summarize the six key concepts in understanding multimodality as metafunctions, mode, semiotic resource, affordance, interest, and multimodal orchestration. Following H ALLIDAY (1978), metafunctions refer to three different but interrelated operations: ideational meaning, interpersonal meaning and textual meaning. Ideational meaning refers to the social and cultural representations of certain aspects of the world, including objects and relations. In choosing a representation, the writer (or composer) of the text positions the readers (or viewers) to produce interpersonal meanings. Finally, every component plays a role in achieving coherence for textual meaning. In multimodal texts, a visual grammar can demonstrate how images work like language (cf. K RESS / V AN L EEUWEN 2006). A visual grammar is particular to a group in its relation to the knowledge and uses within the group, so it is not universal. However, K RESS and V AN L EEUWEN (ibid.) suggest that the grammatical principles are general enough to apply across different genres from scientific graphics to comics, which include: • Given and new - similar to written texts in which given information is introduced before new information in the clause structure in a sentence, placement of given and new visual information is arranged from left to right position. This structure is mostly applicable to texts produced in the cultures of left-to-right viewing; • Ideal and real - the ideal, the promise, and the real, the factual is arranged in a top and down placement; • Centre and margins - the central space presents the nucleus of information and all images in the margins are dependent elements. Visual Literacy 47 43 (2014) • Heft 2 Images can also be understood like language. Vectors guide the direction of reading, for instance, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. The foregrounding and backgrounding in images is similar to prepositions of location. In addition, the sizing and placement in images give readers the comparative perspective. In a text with both visual and linguistic modes, sometime one mode re-represent the same meaning, that is called synesthesia. Meaning expressed in one mode cannot be directly translated into another, at least not completely, and K RESS (1997) proposes the concept of transduction. In the following section, I will use the example of infographics to illustrate the operation of visual literacy. 3. Infographics: Visual literacy in action Infographics, short for information graphics, are “visual cues to communicate information” (L ANKOW 2012: 3), and have become increasingly popular among governments, corporates and non-profit organizations to disseminate complex sets of data (cf. A NGELO 2012). Infographics usually combine data visualizations, texts, illustrations, and images to provide a narrative to data sets, and are characterised by large typography and a vertical display orientation (cf. L ANKOW 2012). Infographics are growing in popularity because the information providers can communicate complex data sets visually and the attractive visual presentations encourage social media users to pass them around via websites and social media platforms. Of course, using graphics to present information is nothing new, as the early seminal work by T UFTE (1983) demonstrated the principles of visualizing data effectively and efficiently in print media. However, emerging technologies provide greater affordances to professional designers, and less experienced amateurs, to create more attractive infographics (cf. K RUM 2014). While technologies have made it easier to create an infographic there are certain shared characteristics to a well-designed infographic: • Engaging topic • New, surprising information • Visually appealing and distinctive • Simple, focused message • Quick and easy to read • Easy to share • Clear, easy to understand data visualizations • Credible data sources (K RUM 2014: xvii - xviii) And T UFTE (1983: 194) suggests that it is the job of the designer to “give visual access to the subtle and the difficult - that is, the revelation of the complex” while warning that visuals and texts should be integrated otherwise “we may come to see only through the lenses of word authority rather than with our own eyes”. 48 Alice Chik 43 (2014) • Heft 2 In this section, I will use one example to illustrate the visual literacy required in ‘decoding’ the infographics Why We’re All Ted Heads (O NLINE C LASSES 2012) 1. . The infographic intends to explain the growing popularity of TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Talks videos. TED Talks videos are short presentations (18 minutes or less) recorded at conferences held by the Sapling Foundation. TED Talks videos are hosted on ted.com and are freely available to any users with Internet access. TED Talks presentations cover topics on technology, entertainment, design, business, science and global issues…etc. The popularity of TED Talks videos is evident in its billionth video view (T ED 2012), which surpasses other informational and educational talks and presentations hosted on many of the university open access educational platforms and massive open online courses (MOOCs) platforms. The infographic Why We’re All Ted Heads is composed by OnlineClasses and the full infographic is available online as Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs, which means it can be used for “redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole with credit” (C REATIVE C OMMONS 2014). The whole infographic is relatively long for its genre, and can be read as a long article with essential information about TED Talks videos. In his introduction to creating efficient and effective infographics, K RUM (2014: 27) suggests a simple ‘structure’ to content presentation in a vertical display orientation: Introduction/ Foundation, Ah-Ha! The Main Event, and Conclusion/ Call-to-Action. Why We’re All Ted Heads (‘Why’ hereafter) follows a similar structure (Figure 1, page 49]). ‘Why’ is meant to be read on a computer screen in which viewers have to scroll down to view the whole infographic. ‘Why’ also uses a simple colour scheme: red, grey, beige and turquoise. The red colour is the same shade used on the TED.com website. Visually it is also easy to see that thick black horizontal lines are used to divide the content or the main event into five chunks of information. There is no specific allocated placement of the visuals and texts. The introduction section starts with the title “WHY WE’RE ALL TED HEADS: TED culture is hitting critical mass, here’s how it happened and why it matters: ”, which is followed by a visual similar to a pie chart. At this point, the readers have no linguistic cue to what the pie-chart visual may represent. As mentioned, a thick black line is used to divide the content into chunks, similar to the use of spacing to separate paragraphs in a written essay. At the top of each section is a short sentence (e.g. TED TALKS ARE SPECTACLES FOR SMART PEOPLE , Figure 1 [  page 49]), which serves the same function as a topic sentence in a paragraph. This topic sentence is printed all in capital letters and the keyword (SPECTACLES) is presented in bigger typography and in red while the rest of the sentence is presented in black. From this point onwards, the visual division deviates from a traditional written essay, and is comprised of two or three columns of information presented either as texts or visuals. 1 “WHY WE’RE ALL TED HEADS: TED culture is hitting critical mass, here’s how it happened and why it matters: ” is released by OnlineClasses.org and is available from http: / / www.onlineclasses.org/ 2012/ 11/ 05/ ted-talks/ (July 21, 2014). Visual Literacy 49 43 (2014) • Heft 2 Figure 1: Screen capture of a section of ‘Why’ (Created by OnlineClasses.org 2012) 50 Alice Chik 43 (2014) • Heft 2 To further examine the interaction between texts and visuals, we will focus on the section titled ‘SPECTACLES’. Immediately underneath the topic sentence, readers can see the separation of two sets of information: a double quotation mark with a name and a sentence (‘ I JUST WANTED TO THROW THE WORLD ’ S BEST DINNER PARTY ’). Even though a vertical turquoise line separates the double quotation mark and the sentence, it is immediately understood that the sentence is a quote from Richard Saul Wurman, TED conference creator. The coherence is carried over to the next sub-section which started with ‘ HIS IDEA ’, whose idea? The only person mentioned in this section is Richard Saul W URMAN , thus immediately provided the reference point. Here the visual of a light bulb surrounded by quotation marks illustrates rather than interact with the text (‘Invite the best and brightest to come “ GIVE THE GREATEST TALK OF THEIR LIVES ” in 18 minutes’). The next sub-section presented two different ways of using visuals and texts to disseminate information. This section is presented as two columns, with “ DÉCOR AT THE FIRST TED CONFERENCE ” on the left-hand side and “ GUESTS SINCE THEN INCLUDE ” on the right. Let us read the first item in the left hand column (the décor): the visual of a document is placed next to the text (“A $25 million copy of the Declaration of Independence”). It can be said that the visual simply illustrates and repeats the text without providing additional information. Now, let us turn our attention to the first item in the right hand column (the guests): the visual of a flag of the United States of America is placed on top of the text (“Bill Clinton”). The American flag complements the identity of the presidential speaker, Bill Clinton. Here, different from the previous example in the left-hand column, both the visual and the text provide information or each provides information to supplement the understanding of the other. In this infographic, we have to ask a question about visualization: are the visuals and texts doing the same or different thing? Interestingly, the answer is both yes and no. In some instances, the visuals and texts represent different concepts; but there are also instances that they are representing the same information. When both visuals and texts are trying to provide the same information, for instance, in the case of the flag and Bill Clinton, the visual and the text have to be treated as one unit of information. At the same time, the design of the infographic also follows what we understand as the information giving structure of the given and the new with left and right placement of both visuals and texts. However, in other instances, the visuals and the texts are doing what they are supposed to do. The thick black lines that divide the body of content into shorter sections are only mimicking the function of space between paragraphs, except being presented in a new graphical form. Of course, as much as I would like to argue for the effectiveness of infographics, like other examples from the argumentative genre, infographics can be biased in the sense that the graphic designers are shaping the perception of the readers by using the visuals effectively (cf. K RUM 2014). In addition, the comprehension of ‘Why’ is culturally situated - the viewers have first to know the existence of TED Talks and its formats and contents to appreciate the infographic. Without any prior knowledge of TED Talks the rhetoric of this infographic may well be lost on the viewers. Visual Literacy 51 43 (2014) • Heft 2 The combined composition of visuals and texts prompt infographic designers (writers) to be more aware of their expressions and intentions of their compositions. At the same time, this example also illustrates that the comprehension of an infographic requires the comprehension of both the visual and textual data and the interaction between the visual and textual data. Or in a more radical move, G RUBER (forthcoming) suggests using infographics to replace scientific reports in academic settings for the exact arguments. In his advocacy of infographics for scientific presentations, G RUBER suggests that the compositional process of infographics forces students to select, summarize and condense information and research without hiding behind the veils of academic jargons. Infographics may require technological knowhow and are not currently included in many language curriculums worldwide. However, the application of infographics by governments, corporates and non-profit organization to persuade their citizens and customers has increased exponentially. The information conveyed in these infographics, just like any propagandas and advertisements, are not neutral. In this regards, teachers have the responsibility to introduce students to better understand them as rhetorical texts through both the texts and the visuals. Of course, we can not ignore the fact that infographics have become popular because it is easy for social media users to share them on different online platforms. Take our infographic as an example, while the print medium has the limitation of framing it to one page, viewing it on screen simply means scrolling the curser further down. It can then be argued that more social media users are sharing biased arguments more quickly and efficiently. This is one aspect of modern day digital practices that language teachers must become more aware. 4. From print to digital medium: Visual literacy for learning The infographic cited earlier does not exist in a cultural and social vacuum, it is part of an expanding digital landscape of online practices. TED videos are watched by millions of online users, as evident by the number of views on YouTube and TED.com. Unavoidably a good percentage of these TED Talk videos viewers are learning English as a second and foreign language. As more people have better access to Internet connection and technical knowhow, foreign language learners are gradually expanding their learning beyond the traditional language classrooms. In the past, the opportunities for foreign language learning and use might be limited: classrooms, study abroad, library, radio and television programmes, films, pop songs and other popular cultural artefacts. However, learners’ access to foreign language learning materials and opportunities could be highly limited by socio-economic resources, for instances, not every foreign language learner could afford to study overseas or buy a book. In the case of English learning, social class is a determining factor in shaping learning practices (cf. B LOCK 2014; B ESSER / C HIK 2014). Yet, engaging in digital practices may rectify the situation. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, blogs and wikis now provide globalized online affinity spaces (cf. G EE 2004), and learners with special interests in digital gaming and fan fiction reading and writing also find spaces for playing and learning 52 Alice Chik 43 (2014) • Heft 2 (cf. T HORNE / B LACK / S YKES 2009). Many of these online platforms provide multilingual platforms, but English is still the most used language (cf. C HIK 2012). The virtual worlds of digital media are now the new learning contexts for language learning, and the reading, writing and communicative skills required are different from traditional print media or taught in the language classroom. A quick look at any websites will highlight the dominance of visual elements, and this applies to almost all contemporary websites, such as search engine (e.g. Google.com), media (e.g. Guardian.co.uk, DieZeit.de, or CNN.com), government, educational, institutional or corporate websites. In particular, user-generated online social media platforms, like YouTube and Flickr, encourage interaction that is grounded in understanding of both visual and textual elements. The work by B ARTON and L EE (2013) on Flickr communities shows that the photographs shared might have initiated topics of discussion, but it is only through the understanding of all the semiotics and textual resources available on the website which allows full participation and learning. B ARTON and L EE show that looking at a Flickr page is a reading, and there is more than one reading paths. Using a photograph of ‘Look at me in the eye’, B ARTON and L EE each described their reading paths: B ARTON looks at the photograph, the most recent comment and information tags about where the photograph was taken, but L EE looks at the photograph, read all the comments, and then the photograph description. In both reading paths, the dominance of the visual text (the photograph) directed the reading order. In addition to written comments, social media platforms have in-built features to encourage users to express their opinions through multimodal means. For instance, users can click on the ‘thumb up’ icon on YouTube or the star icon on Flickr to signal their positive rating for the video or photograph they viewed. Users do not necessarily have to use linguistic means to express their preferences and stances (cf. B ARTON / L EE 2013). Other forms of digital practices also draw heavily on visual elements, especially digital gaming. Researchers have started to argue that digital gaming provide abundant affordances for foreign language learning and use (cf. for example G EE 2003; C ORNILLIE / T HORNE / D ESMET 2012; R EINDERS 2012; S YKES / R EINHARDT 2013). Contemporary digital games are more than the arcade games of earlier days. Digital games can also be viewed as digital narratives that the visual aspects direct the enjoyment and understanding of gameplay. G EE (2003) describes reading a modern digital game is a split-screen reading act that the game players have to pay attention to multiple sources of information on screen. In addition, the visual cues frequently complement the linguistic understanding to allow foreign language learners to play games without feeling inadequate (cf. C HIK 2014). For instance, in a role-playing adventure game, a gamer frequently has to shift between different menus to equip the avatar to fight a monster or advance forward in the gameworld. The visual literacy required for digital gaming is both sophisticated and demanding, and gamers learn to navigate over their game playing careers. Visual Literacy 53 43 (2014) • Heft 2 5. Concluding thoughts The visual turn must be understood not as something ‘new’, but as re-emergence, as K RESS (1998) puts it “not as new in itself, but as new in the light of the recent history of representation, and of the nearly unshakeable commonsense that developed along with writing’s preeminence” (p. 60). It must also be warned that the flourishing of visual images does not mean our students will automatically pay more attention to these visual images, and it also does not mean that they will suddenly develop the ability to critically interpret their visual surroundings. K RESS and V AN L EEUWEN (2006: 3) argue that “‘Visual literacy’ will begin to be a matter of survival” because of technological changes, visual communication is becoming “less and less the domain of specialists”. Visual literacy is not only reserved for artists, painters, sculptors and graphic designers, it is part of our daily communication landscape, so it is an essential skill for everyone who needs to communicate. This is the part that educators need to take up the responsibility to include visual literacy in our literacy lessons. To educate our students to handle the communicative needs for tomorrow, visual literacy should be the cornerstone of literacy curriculum. Literature A NGELO , Fernando (2012): “Killer infographic! But does it solve TMI? Tech Talk”. In: Communication World 29.2. http: / / discovery.iabc.com/ page_image.php? cid=3183&page_num=0&type=.pdf &print=true (May 2, 2014). 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