Explicating inter-modal meaning-making in media and literary texts: Towards a metalanguage of image/language relations

Abstract

There appears to be a widespread consensus among educational researchers from diverse discipline backgrounds that literacy and literacy pedagogy can no longer be discussed in terms of language alone, and that reconceptualizing literacy and literacy education at least needs to incorporate the role of images in an increasing range of different types of texts. It is also the case that syllabi for the teaching of English in government schools in most Australian States require students to learn about the role of images in their comprehension of various kinds of texts and, to a lesser extent, their composition of texts for a variety of purposes. Although there is a tendency for work on the meaning-making resources of images and language to be compartmentalized in separate categories for 'reading' and 'viewing', the incorporation of attention to the role of images in texts seems to be uncontentious in contemporary English teaching. What is and has long been contentious in English teaching in Australia, the United Kingdom and North America is the role of metalanguage, the type of grammar, its purpose in the curriculum and approaches to its teaching.