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Critical literacy

2 aspects:1. Textual: how effectively do form and content

cohere to achieve meaning and purpose?

2. Contextual: – who made this and why?– how does it try to influence me?– how does it try to influence society?– what viewpoints are missing?

3Center for Media Literacy, Malibu, USA: www.medialit.org

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In a diagram …

PURPOSE

What are we saying?

To what audience?

In what media & genres?

In what style?

How is it to be distributed?…

DESIGN & PRODUCTION

Rhetorical templates

How do we put it together?

How do we say it well? …

MULTIMODAL ELEMENTS

What modes do we need to think about? e.g. language, audio, image, typography, colour, layout, space, body language, interaction, movement, …

EVALUATION

Is it well put together?

What parts are successful?

Did we miss anything or anyone out?

What does the target audience think about it?

How would we do it better next time? …

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Print ad content

headline

copy

slogan (strapline)

illustrations (photographs, artwork, graphics, product)

signature with logo

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‘Traditional’ print ad analysis

• Denotation: ‘hand’ of green leaves offers reader fromage frais

• Connotation: ‘hand’, wild flowers, countryside connote ‘nature’

• Inference: Little Stars is safe for our children; this is confirmed by copy “a helping hand from Mother Nature”

• Myth: countryside as ‘natural’; masks human labour and technologies (chemical, biological, mechanical) which produce product & countryside

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Rhetorical structures 1: design

Contrast: left and right

Repetition:

•Maroon colour

•Typography (white sans serif centred)

Alignment

•vertical

•horizontal

Proximity: logo, strapline & product in right panel

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Rhetorical structures 2: left-right

• Problem-solution• Left-right reading path• Given-new• Given: some women

spend a lot of time on their looks

• New: it’s quicker to drink Ocean Spray

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Rhetorical structures 3: top-bottom

• Problem-solution• Top-bottom reading

path (also diagonal)• Given-new• Given: some people

go to extremes to find tranquillity

• New: Glenmorangie is a more down-to-earth way of finding it

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Rhetorical structures 4: alternatives

• Q. What is the device in foreground?

• Converging lines lead from foreground object to solution in background – USB stick modem for wireless broadband

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Rhetorical devices in ads

Research shows that ads which use

rhetorical devices:

• are more liked

• lead to better recall of ad headlines

• lead to a more positive brand attitude

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Rhetorical devices 1: language

• Informal or colloquial language: “By ‘eck petal, you smell gorgeous tonight” (Boddington’s)

• Word/phrase invention: “A newspaper not a snoozepaper” (Mail on Sunday)

• Repetition: “Drinka Pinta Milk a Day”; “Beanz Meanz Heinz”; “Va va voom” (Renault Clio); “Hello Moto” (Motorola)

• Similarity: “Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet”; “I never knew four and a half inches could give me so much pleasure” (Irn-Bru)

• Paradox: “Let your fingers do the walking” (Yellow Pages)

• Ambiguity: “Everyone’s a fruit and nut case” (Cadbury)

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Rhetorical devices 2: direct look

• Look at reader is a demand

• Eva Longoria (Desperate Housewives) demands that you indulge yourself

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Rhetorical devices 3: indirect look

• Look away from reader is an offer

• Low angle point-of-view so we look up at the model and wonder would if we would look as sophisticated in Prada eyewear

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Rhetorical devices 4: words & images

• Cliché: NEW• Celebrity endorsement• “Mini size Magnum

indulgence” refers to both Ms Longoria and the choc-ice

• Note rhyming of brown and white

• Words and images resonate

• Words resonate with reader’s intertextual encyclopedia

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Image-image interaction

3 possibilities are:

• Juxtaposition: 2 images side-by-side

• Fusion: 2 images combined into one

• Replacement: one image points to an absent image

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Juxtaposition as rhetorical device

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Fusion as rhetorical device

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Replacement as rhetorical device

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Puzzles as rhetorical device 1

• Rebus (visual puzzle) • Aimed at media-savvy

reader• Rather than saying

problem A can be solved by product B, it sets a problem for the clever media-literate reader:

• What is it and what is it advertising?

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Puzzles as rhetorical device 2

This requires:• Introspection on

mental operations• Expression in

language

Language practice that

is also good fun!

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Analyse this …

• Content– technical description– modes

• Rhetorical structures: – design (CRAP)– left-right or top-bottom?

• Rhetorical devices– language– look– resonances (text-text, text-

image, image-image, reader)

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Analyse this …

• Content– technical description– modes

• Rhetorical structures: – design (CRAP)– left-right or top-bottom?

• Rhetorical devices– language– look– resonances (text-text, text-

image, image-image, reader)

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Compare these critically …

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Roy Lichtenstein’s Wham

What modes of communication are being used?

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References

Instrell, R. (2008) “Something Old, Something New: Something Excellent? Part 1: Rhetorical, multimodal and critical literacy”. In Media Education Journal 43, Spring 2008.

Machin D. (2007) Introduction to Multimodal Analysis. London: Hodder Arnold.

New London Group (1996) “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures”. In Cope B. and Kalantzis M. (2000) Multiliteracies. London: Routledge..