Abstract
Research on academic literacies has predominately focused on writing practices in higher education. To account for writing practices in the digital age, this paper emphasizes the importance of extending the focus of academic literacies beyond writing to include multimodal composition. Drawing on social semiotics, we put forward a framework for understanding and analysing multimodal academic argument. This framework views argument in relation to features that make up text, namely mode, genre, discourse, and medium. We also look at ways in which multimodal resources are appropriated into argument through citation. Becoming more explicit about the ways in which academic argument is constructed is important for enabling student access into the discourses and practices of academia.
Highlights
This paper takes a multimodal perspective (Jewitt, 2009; Kress, 2010) to look again at the key concerns of an ‘academic literacies’ approach to teaching and research (Lillis and Scott, 2007)
An academic literacies approach focuses on student identity, institutional relationships of discourse and power, and the contested nature of writing practices
This paper investigates a multimodal approach to academic argument
Summary
This paper takes a multimodal perspective (Jewitt, 2009; Kress, 2010) to look again at the key concerns of an ‘academic literacies’ approach to teaching and research (Lillis and Scott, 2007). An academic literacies approach focuses on student identity, institutional relationships of discourse and power, and the contested nature of writing practices Crucial to this approach is a concern with agency and power and how to provide diverse students access to academic practices in ways that utilize and value their resources.The norms and conventions around constructing multimodal texts in higher education are no more ‘transparent’ than the norms around writing. The use of digital media and the increasing importance of image as a carrier of meaning in text, raise questions about the function and forms of writing in academia In response to this changing communication landscape, researchers have explored multimodal approaches to academic argument. Huang (2015), for instance, interrogates the affordances of adopting a multimodal approach to academic argument using comics, digital video, and PowerPoint She argues for making explicit the potentials and the limitations of academic argument and the overlaps between academic conventions and other text-making practices. We discuss each of these features in relation to argument and consider the implications for academic literacies.We begin by defining the way in which we view argument
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