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http://qrj.sagepub.com/ Qualitative Research http://qrj.sagepub.com/content/11/3/293 The online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 10.1177/1468794111399838 2011 11: 293 Qualitative Research Rosie Flewitt digital age Bringing ethnography to a multimodal investigation of early literacy in a Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com can be found at: Qualitative Research Additional services and information for http://qrj.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts: http://qrj.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions: http://qrj.sagepub.com/content/11/3/293.refs.html Citations: What is This? - Jun 6, 2011 Version of Record >> at EMORY UNIV on June 2, 2014 qrj.sagepub.com Downloaded from at EMORY UNIV on June 2, 2014 qrj.sagepub.com Downloaded from

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 DOI: 10.1177/1468794111399838

2011 11: 293Qualitative ResearchRosie Flewittdigital age

Bringing ethnography to a multimodal investigation of early literacy in a  

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Qualitative Research11(3) 293 –310

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Bringing ethnography to a multimodal investigation of early literacy in a digital age

Rosie FlewittThe Open University, UK

AbstractIn this article I reflect on the insights that the well established traditions of ethnography can bring to the more recent analytic tools of multimodality in the investigation of early literacy practices. First, I consider the intersection between ethnography and multimodality, their compatibility and the tensions and ambivalences that arise from their potentially conflicting epistemological framings. Drawing on ESRC-funded case studies of three and four-year-old children’s experiences of literacy with printed and digital media,1 I then illustrate how an ethnographic toolkit that incorporates a social semiotic approach to multimodality can produce richly situated insights into the complexities of early literacy development in a digital age, and can inform socially and culturally sensitive theories of literacy as social practice (Street, 1984, 2008).

Keywordsearly years, ethnography, multimodality, literacy, new technologies, social practice

The intersection between multimodality and ethnography

Historically, education theory in western societies has tended to focus on language as the primary site for meaning making, and education curricula have prioritized writing and speech as key in the training of new generations. Over the past decade or so, scholars working with multimodality have challenged this assumption by drawing attention to the often central role of visual, gestural and kinaesthetic modes in learning processes and the multiple modes at play in learning artefacts (e.g. Jewitt, 2009; Kress, 2010; Pahl and Rowsell, 2010). Multimodality is a comparatively recent field of research that has evolved out of social semiotic linguistic analysis, but it has been adapted by researchers from a range of disciplines who draw on diverse methods and theoretical approaches to investigate communication, representation and learning (see Jewitt, 2009, for discussion

Corresponding author:Rosie Flewitt, Faculty of Education and Language Studies, Centre for Language and Communication, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UKEmail: [email protected]

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of how different fields of study have applied multimodality). It has found particular resonance with scholars investigating new communicative technologies (e.g. Lankshear and Knobel, 2006; Pahl, 2005; Wohlwend, 2009; Wolfe and Flewitt, 2010), and with researchers who use digital media for the collection and storage of multimodal data (Flewitt, 2006; Plowman and Stephen, 2008).

Michael Halliday’s (1978) theories of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) offer one way to theorize multimodal data. Halliday combined the study of grammatical systems with social semantics, paying heed to the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski’s proposal that the meaning of spoken language is inextricably bound to the ‘context of situation’ (Malinowski, 2007 [1966]). As Malinowski recognized in his seminal work on Trobriand gardening, if separated from their context of action and situation, words ‘remain meaningless and futile’:

. . . there is nothing more dangerous than to imagine that language is a process running parallel and exactly corresponding to mental process, and that the function of language is to reflect or to duplicate the mental reality of man in a secondary flow of verbal equivalents. The fact is that the main function of language is not to express thought, not to duplicate mental processes, but rather to play an active, pragmatic part in human behaviour . . . it is . . . an adjunct to bodily activities. (Malinowski, 2007 [1966]: 7)

Malinowski’s choice of terminology (‘adjunct’) suggests that he viewed language as an appendage to socially situated activity. A social semiotic approach to multimodality pro-vides a more integrative framework for theorizing how meanings made with language are interwoven with meanings made with other modes within particular social contexts. In multimodality studies, all modes are considered to have the potential to contribute equally to meaning making, and the interplay between modes produces an ‘ensemble of meaning’ that goes beyond its constituent modal parts (Kress, 2010).

Although social semiosis offers a theorized framework for multimodal analysis, the epistemological framing and temporal conventions of description upon which linguistic research claims are based can become problematic when used for analyzing and rep-resenting the complexity of socially situated activity. With regard to units of analysis, for example, traditional linguistic understandings of the term ‘text’ become problematic, implying the clear boundaries of a word, utterance or series of utterances. Social semiotic theory extends these boundaries, viewing text as an instantiation of culture and social situation, and this is more in tune with, although it does not go so far as, ethnographic interpretations of culture-as-text. For example, for Geertz, the notion of culture was essentially semiotic, constituting ‘webs of significance’ that man has spun around himself (Geertz, 1973: 5). From this perspective, all artefacts and actions are bound up in those cultural webs of significance which ethnographers seek to understand, so all aspects of culture can be read as ‘text’. Many ethnographers have adopted Geertz’ notion of ‘thick description’, adopted from Ryle (1971), to theorize observed behaviours. However, Geertz’ work has been strongly critiqued for defining ‘text’ intuitively and variously (e.g. Schneider, 1987), and the concept of thick description begs the question of what data has been selected for description, inviting criticisms that ethnography risks making rather than reflecting culture (e.g. Clifford and Marcus, 1986).

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In contrast to language-based definitions of ‘text’, and influenced by ethnographic interpretations of the term, a social semiotic perspective views the social processes of text production as central to meaning:

The process of social meaning making – of social semiosis – is what gives rise to the making of the text. But the boundaries of the text . . . are not the boundaries of meaning making . . . The text and its boundaries do not stop this process of semiosis: they provide a punctuation only. (Kress, 2010: 134)

This focus on the processes of text production offers a theoretically grounded framework for definitions of ‘text’ that include more conventional text-like objects such as printed documents, TV programmes and websites, as well as the everyday practices of human beings, referred to as ‘practically lived texts’ (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2001: 24).

In addition to taking into account the social processes of text production, social semiotic approaches to multimodality consider the ‘affordances’ of different modes (Kress et al., 2001). That is, the temporal and material qualities of modes, which are determined partly by the materiality of the medium, and partly by how that medium is used within a particular culture. The affordances of different modes offer particular constraints and possibilities for meaning making, and therefore offer different potentials for learning. For example, when helping a child complete a jigsaw puzzle, speech might be used to discuss the images on individual pieces, but pointing gestures might be more apt for indicating where a piece is located in the puzzle. This consideration of affor-dances and choice leads to the notion of design and intent in communicative acts: why teachers and learners choose to use particular modes at particular times in particular ways in particular social contexts, and to what extent these decisions are free or governed by social and cultural norms and practices. This in turn leads to reflection on how mean-ings are interpreted differently, and are not always accessible to or understood by all participants in research settings, particularly those unfamiliar with a given set of prac-tices within a given social and cultural domain (both researchers and researched).

A further dimension of data interpretation is inextricably tied to the nature of the data collected. Multimodality scholars tend to use visual technologies for data capture, often resulting in complex multimedia data sets with still and/or moving visual, audio and written texts. The researcher must therefore take into account not only how participants communicate through diverse modes and media, but also how the data sets captured in different media ‘speak’ to each other. As Dicks et al. (2006) suggest, meanings are produced through the inter-relationships between and among multi-media data sets. Inevitably, at the stage of research reporting, the often highly visual, aural and kinaes-thetic nature of multimodal data leads to dilemmas of data representation and the search for a broader range of approaches to disseminating research findings that can accommo-date multimodal data (Flewitt, 2006; Plowman and Stephen, 2008).

These issues of how to capture, define, analyse and represent the meaning potential of diverse, interwoven semiotic modes are currently contentious and as yet unresolved issues in the development of multimodality. However, they do not detract from the need in an age increasingly dominated by multimedia forms of communication to develop robust methodological and theoretical approaches that take into account how socially

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situated meanings are expressed and interpreted in different modes. While a multimodal approach based on social semiotics offers a systematic framing for this endeavour, at a certain point in the understanding of social experience it has limitations and does not offer holistic insights into how participants’ multimodal meaning making is situated in the ebb and flow of daily practices. When seeking to understand social practice, it is therefore vital to recognize what is and what is not accessible to semiotic analysis.

What insights then can ethnography offer to the social semiotic strand of multimodal endeavour when investigating literacy as social practice? Before attempting to answer this question, it is helpful to recall that the term ‘ethnography’ does not have a standard, well-defined meaning (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007). Ethnographic approaches vary and have been used in the pursuit of a range of theoretical ideas, including, for example, anthropology, symbolic interactionism, phenomenology, structuralism, constructionism and post-modernism. Yet, over-arching characteristics of ethnographic research include recognition that: 1) data should be drawn from ‘real world’ contexts; 2) both participant (emic) and researcher (etic) perspectives should be valued; and 3) meanings emerge in social and cultural contexts from the interwovenness of language, bodily movements, artefacts, images and technologies.

Early ethnographers, such as Malinowski, tended to live in the research community for years, but Green and Bloome (1997: 183–184) propose that such immersion in the field is one of three possible approaches to ethnography: ‘doing ethnography’ (a broad, in-depth, long-term study of a social/cultural group conducted within an anthropological framing); adopting an ‘ethnographic approach’ (a more focused study of particular aspects of the everyday life and practices of a community); and ‘using ethnographic tools’ (using ethnographic methods and techniques during fieldwork). In literacy research, ethnographic approaches combined with linguistic analysis have underpinned the development of New Literacy Studies – a field of research that has adopted Hymes’ notion of ‘ethnography of communication’ (1972) to situate literacy in the context of everyday social practices (Heath, 1983; Hymes, 1996; Maybin, 2007; Street, 1984). Combining ethnography with a theoretically-grounded interest in diverse semiotic systems, not just language, opens up the possibility for investigating how contemporary literacy practices with printed and digital texts, which are frequently rich in images, writing and sound, are produced and understood within the situated contexts of broader social and cultural framings. Whereas a multimodal focus on the interplay of modes within literacy practices may risk overlooking more distal layers of influence, ethno-graphic perspectives familiarize and sensitize researchers to the local, allowing deep, if fragmentary, insights into participants’ lives. As Street et al. (2009: 197) suggest: ‘An ethnographic lens gives multimodal analysis a social map’.

So what can a social semiotic approach to multimodality offer to ethnographic studies? Essentially, it offers a set of theorized analytic tools which can reveal the intrica-cies of how social and cultural norms, relationships and identities are played out through discursive and institutional processes in diverse modes and media. There is of course a history of ethnographic literacy research that includes semiotic analysis, albeit with differing levels of engagement. These include Harste et al.’s (1984) interpretation of children’s literacy, Genishi and Dyson’s (2009) use of the term ‘multi-modal’ to describe how children reveal their symbolic and discursive flexibility by drawing on diverse

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cultural resources, Pahl’s (2005) study of young children’s uses of games consoles and Wohlwend’s (2009) investigation of how young children imagine new technologies and identities in their play.

I do not mean to argue that multimodal tools and perspectives make ethnographic studies better, or vice versa. I merely propose that, as one strategy within the broader fields of ethnography and multimodality, their partnership can lead to the production of grounded, theorized, detailed and holistic insights into literacy as social practice, revealing how micro-moments of multimodal meaning making unfold in a complex network of socially-situated norms and practices, as I will now demonstrate.

A focus on young children’s literacy development in a technological age

The issues of methodological compatibility discussed above became empirical realities in a small-scale study of the diverse printed and digital literacy practices that young children experience at home and in early education.1 The study was founded on the premise that in contemporary society, where communication is increasingly global, fluid, and networked (Castells, 2001), learning to be ‘literate’ involves acquiring a range of skills and practices in different media, where individuals need new kinds of expertise, technical skills and understanding. However, as Lankshear and Knobel (2006: 30) point out: ‘(w)e are presently at a point in the historical-cultural develop-ment of literacy where we don’t really know how to deal educationally with these new literacies’.

The substantive aim of the study was to further theoretical understandings of early literacy development at a time of unprecedented use of digital technologies in everyday life. Homing in on one boy’s literacy experiences with diverse technologies, this article does not report the substantive findings, which are beginning to be published else-where (Wolfe and Flewitt, 2010) but reflects on how the methodological approach of combining multimodality with ethnography gave rich insights into young children’s early literacy practices with diverse technologies.

The study was conducted in one Children’s Centre nursery in the South of England, with ethnographic video case studies of ten boys and girls from different social back-grounds and with differing levels of learning needs. The research site was recommended by the Local Authority as a well resourced, purpose-built ‘flagship early years centre for pre-school children’. Although located in a relatively affluent city suburb, it had a socially mixed catchment area which included two large areas of social housing. Approximately 40 per cent of places were ring-fenced for children identified with spe-cial educational needs from within and beyond the catchment area.

Data were collected in the nursery and case study children’s homes during repeated visits over the course of one academic year, and included an initial survey of all parents in the setting (41 responses; 54% response rate), a review of national and local documen-tation on literacy and new technologies along with video recorded observation (30 data hours), field notes, audio-recorded semi-structured interviews (12 data hours) and infor-mal ‘chats’ logged in field notes. Working with an intuitive and grounded approach to coding derived from the ethnographic experience of being in the field and informed by

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multimodal perspectives on meaning making, data analysis was supported by the use of the software package Atlas.ti, which offered a variety of tools for the rigorous and systematic analysis of complex multimedia qualitative data sets.

A reflexive stance towards interpretation and representation

Clifford suggests that ethnographic accounts are narrative fictions that are ‘inherently partial – committed and incomplete’ (1986: 7, original italics), built as much on system-atic exclusions as on systematic inclusions. But ethnographic reporting also provides a framework for acknowledging researcher subjectivity, so readers of research findings can develop a sense of the researcher’s particular perspective. In this study, working as a researcher with a background in both education and linguistics, multimodality offered a theorized language of description and systematicity for studying how diverse modes, including language, are used as distinct resources for meaning making. Ethnographic methods complemented this multimodal approach both by providing an invaluable window into layers of social complexity, and by creating a context for participant involvement in the interpretation of research data which in turn led to more nuanced insights. The data reported here were discussed informally with adult participants, and those discussions have shaped data interpretation.

To illustrate how the combination of ethnography with multimodality revealed multiple layers of socially situated meaning making in diverse modes, I report here on just one case study of Edward,2 who has been selected as he was one of five of the ten case study children who were competent with new technologies, and he was the only one who staff referred to as spending too much time on the nursery computer. He was 3½ to 4¼ years old during the period of data collection.

The choices of data and forms of representation used in this article are not arbitrary, but are dictated by the norms expected in traditional research reporting and by the need for brevity and clarity. Four representational forms have been chosen: a descriptive account of Edward’s literacy experiences; a video still; a vignette of one instance of Edward’s computer use in the nursery; and an excerpt of multimodal transcription. Each of these is now presented, with discussion of how each emerged from the rich data set, and how each makes a particular contribution to the research findings.

Multiple layers of semiosis: a descriptive account of Edward’s literacy practices

The following narrative account of Edward’s literacy experiences constitutes a synthesis of data from multiple sources in a style that is in keeping with ethnographic reporting. It conflates multiple interpretations of his life gathered through the use of ethnographic tools, including semi-structured and unstructured interviews and chats with participants over time, my own theoretically-informed interpretations of these and of the observation data, supplemented by interpretations of related national and local documentation. While such narrative accounts are susceptible to critiques of ‘writing culture’ rather than ‘reporting culture’, this account also includes participants’ own perspectives and was constructed after discussions with participants about my interpretations.

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Edward lived with both his parents, older brother (three years older) and younger sister (two years younger) in a terraced house close to the city centre. His parents both worked full-time in professional occupations and employed a full-time nanny on weekdays. The maternal grandmother lived nearby and spent one afternoon per week with the children. This was an extremely busy household, where the organization of time and human resources was the lynchpin to its flourishing.3

At home, Edward used a wide range of literacy resources, including printed and audio books, comics, TV, DVDs, computer, Wii and hand-held games consoles, which he engaged with as part of family literacy practices, such as: the weekly reading of comics which was ‘a bit of a ritual when Gran comes’ (parent interview); playing audio books at bedtime; sharing in family readings of stories; imitating his older brother’s reading of school, and beginning to read independently and reading aloud stories that he had memorized from audio recordings. He regularly saw and imitated the family nanny writing a diary of their activities, his parents making shopping lists, reading the newspaper, using reference books and the computer for work and pleasure.

The parents monitored closely how much time their children spent with screens, but also believed in the importance of children being comfortable with new technologies. Edward played alone and with his brother on the Wii and computer, imitating his movements and skills alongside him and when his own turn came to play. He was familiar with the BBC News page which the computer automatically logged on to, and was able to negotiate his way around this independently to access games on the CBeebies4 website.

In the Children’s Centre nursery, which he attended four mornings per week, Edward encountered a further range of quite distinct literacy practices from those he experienced at home. In the nursery, he took part in daily whole group book readings, when the teacher would alternately read and ask questions of the children who sat in a circle on the floor around her. He frequently gravitated towards smaller group readings, when a practitioner would sit on a sofa in the book corner, with clusters of children piled on and around her as she read aloud. These whole group and small group readings were all closely governed by nursery rules and conventions, and by the restrictions of time as a series of finite slots in a busy nursery session.

Edward also took part in a range of table-top drawing and writing activities (such as making cards, learning to recognize and write his name). He acted out stories with other children in role-play games, dressed up as story characters, and played on the computer on his own and with peers. His keyworker5 described him as ‘a deep little boy’ who had a long attention span and became absorbed in activities. He was reported as being respectful of nursery rules and other people and was ‘absolutely amazing with his reading skills’ in that he recognized some words and seemed fascinated by letters, words and numbers. Staff, particularly those with low computer confidence, also commented on his impressive computer knowledge, and his ability to access games by keying in his name as an on-screen password. They reported that although he was good at sharing the computer, he became frustrated if other children were less considerate. Generally fearful of the impact of new technologies on childhood, and in particular of Edward spending too much time with screens, they had begun to restrict his time at the computer, either by directing him to more traditional literacy activities or by switching the computer off and declaring it out of bounds.

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What does this format for reporting ethnographic data achieve? Primarily, it locates Edward’s experiences of literacy in the situated complexity of his social worlds in the two contexts of an English early years centre and a young, professional, comparatively affluent and aspiring family, where both old and new literacy technologies were in daily use in a Western European society that is experiencing fast-paced technological transfor-mation. The account portrays to the reader a sense of how during the course of everyday events, Edward was listening, watching, helping and learning about how diverse literacy resources were organized and accessed in that society through oral, aural, printed and on-screen texts. It also discloses from interviews and observation data that many adults around him remained uncertain of the place of new technologies in young children’s lives, and were themselves sometimes novices at mediating new resources. This uncer-tainty was found at all levels of influence on his learning. At a national level, while the Foundation Stage Curriculum (DfES, 2007) does acknowledge a role for new technologies in early learning, exactly what that role is remains ill-defined, and the focus remains firmly fixed on printed texts. As one practitioner put it:

. . . a lot of our planning and the structure of the classroom is obviously very dependent on the Foundation Stage . . . and there’s a lot more emphasis on books . . . about having a respect for books, being able to hold them correctly, understand the structure of stories whereas when it comes to ICT there is no mention of it . . . it’s about showing an interest in ICT and being able to complete a program . . . so a lot of what happens when we sit down and observe children at the computer is looking that they can do hand-eye coordination that they understand what clicking the mouse means . . .

It appeared that conventional ‘schooled’ literacy goals and practices in national curricula and at more local planning level circumscribed the use of digital tools in the nursery.

Despite this lack of coordinated direction for including digital technologies in chil-dren’s literacy learning, some staff members were well aware of their importance, and recognized that the young children would need to be expert with new technologies in order to keep pace with the world they were growing up in.

These sometimes contradictory attitudes towards new technologies, the recognition of their importance accompanied by a lack of understanding of their precise role and a fear of potential harm to ‘childhood’, permeated down through multiple layers of national and local documentation, and through the observational and interview data. Indeed, the organization of space and the ways artefacts were used in the setting reflected how broader education frames shaped local practices, as shown in the following data extract.

An instance of semiosis: a video still of Edward at the computer

Figure 1 illustrates how, just as new technologies were acknowledged only on the fringes of learning in national and local policies, so they were symbolically located physically around the edges of the playroom, where particular views of literacy learning were reflected in the physical lay-out and practices of the nursery. Although a video still might seem to be a less subjective form of representation, many research-motivated considerations have influenced its choice, which here pivot on my intention to clarify

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for the reader the spatial positioning of the children while they played on the computer, to show the physical organization of space and furnishings while concealing the children’s identities, and to show Edward (foreground in Figure 1) interacting with other children at the computer.

Figure 1 gives a sense of how the desk-top computer was located in a confined corner of the room, next to a printer on a purpose-made desk top which was corralled in by shelves. This corner location meant that all electrical connections were safely concealed, and the layout of the furnishings regulated access, ensuring that only small groups could use the computer at one time. With regard to physical resources, it therefore constituted a safe and comparatively quiet if confined space for learning, but in terms of human resources children were often left to explore games on their own or to help each other, with only occasional adult support to extend their learning. Staff sometimes helped chil-dren to access games on the computer, but most of the observed staff use of computers with clear learning aims focused on supporting children with learning and/or physical impairments. This contrasted with the organization of more traditional literacy activities in the setting, where, as the narrative report suggested, a rich resource of illustrated story and reference books was shared regularly and centrally in different learning spaces: on tabletops, on the floor as part of whole-group teacher-led readings, in a roomy ‘book corner’ equipped with a comfortable sofa and cushions, among many other uses.

Again, the ethnographic approach of getting to know the practices and beliefs from participant perspectives by spending extended periods of time in the setting informed the interpretation of this video still. Researcher observations of how furnishings and

Figure 1.

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artefacts were located and used in the nursery reveal how they both functionally and symbolically represent the broader educational, social and cultural environment where they are located. In other words, the practitioners’ beliefs and practices, the social relationships and the children’s access to learning were all literally shaped by, negotiated through and anchored in artefacts and their physical arrangement and use in the classrooms.

An episode of semiosis: a vignette of Edward’s literacy play

The following vignette portrays in more detail how the computer was used in a literacy-related activity in the nursery. Like the narrative account, its composition is a transduction of data collected in diverse media and presented anew in written format. While the vignette is based principally on multiple video viewings of one short data extract, it also includes reference to interviews and field notes. It is coloured by my recollections of ‘being there’ as the children played, and by my theorized interpretations of the activity that was occurring. It is therefore a reduced account of observed practices, where some features are placed in the limelight while others have faded deep into the shadows. Writing a vignette necessarily falls short of reproducing the phenomenological experience of being in the field, yet it offers a way to distil observed practices into the portrayal of a scene that captures something of the rich sights, sounds and senses of the ethnographic research experience.

Edward has been playing on the computer for ten minutes, sometimes on his own, and sometimes with other children joining him for brief periods. The sounds of the game attract a girl’s attention and she approaches, watches the screen, and reaches over for the mouse which Edward, still gazing at the screen, willingly lets her take. He continues playing, using the space bar on the keyboard to control the game instead of the mouse. The girl gazes at the screen, and after a few moments right clicks the mouse, which makes the game stop. Keeping his gaze on the screen, Edward reaches for the mouse to start the game again, but the girl resists, using her body to push Edward to one side while clinging on to the mouse. Tussling silently, they both gaze around as though looking for adult intervention. Edward manages to click the mouse while it is in the girl’s grasp, an action which returns the screen to the desktop, so he relinquishes the mouse. They both gaze at the screen. Edward strokes the girl’s hair gently and asks ‘Shall we do a different one Chrissie?’ Chrissie moves the mouse to highlight ‘Spider in the kitchen’ game and clicks but nothing happens. ‘You need to click on them twice’, suggests Edward. Chrissie selects an ordering game, which shows five drawn icons: a teabag, a teapot, some milk, two cups and a kettle. ‘Make the tea in the teapot first’, instructs the voiceover, then ‘What will you do now?’ Chrissie does not react and after a short pause, the voice instructs ‘Pour boiling water into the teapot’. Chrissie clicks on the kettle icon and using the mouse moves it across the screen to pour water into the teapot. ‘What will you do now?’ asks the voice. ‘Now’ responds Edward, and completes his utterance by pointing to the teabag. They continue playing until they are joined by a younger boy, who pushes in between them (centre, Figure 1), jostles Chrissie out of the way, leans forward and switches off the screen. Silently, Edward gently strokes the boy’s hair to encourage him to calm down, and Chrissie switches the screen back on. All three continue playing, with Chrissie controlling the mouse as she sequences making toast in response to Edward’s directions and the voiceover instructions, while the boys intermittently pretend to eat the toast.

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From this vignette, the reader begins to get a sense of how the interaction between the children was negotiated in ensembles of meaning created through multiple modes, primarily through embodied action, particularly pointing and the sensual use of touch, with some use of spoken language while their gaze remained largely fixed on the screen. Kress et al. (2001) refer to these ensembles as the multimodal ‘orchestration of mean-ing’, yet ‘orchestration’ evokes a sense of rehearsal and practised performance that does not resonate with the data in this study. A more apt description is ‘multimodal improvisation’, where communication through multiple modes occurs most effectively when individuals have (or are developing) an intuitive and technical understanding of the particular skills and practices that pertain within particular domains.

Breaking down the semiotic interplay: a multimodal transcript of Edward’s literacy play

Finally, the multimodal transcript shown in Table 1 breaks down the complexity of the children’s interaction described in the vignette, and illustrates the detail of the interplay between diverse modes in their negotiation of this on-screen literacy activity.

Socially, the relatively confined space of the computer corner was negotiated entirely through action as the children used their bodies to establish their place at the table, to gain control of the computer (Lines 19–32), to perform game-related actions and to role-play on-screen events in real life (Lines 40–41). Throughout the episode, partly because of the layout of the physical resources and the absence of human resources in terms of adult support, the screen acted as an anchor for their gaze, resulting in almost no gaze exchange between the participants. However, the choice of modes varied between par-ticipants. During the extract, Chrissie and the young boy each only spoke once (Lines 20 and 21), whereas Edward, who we know from the ethnographic data gathered at home and in the nursery was more skilled at the computer than the other children, frequently gave instructions verbally and by pointing, reproducing the game’s vocabulary and sequencing structures (Lines 3, 6, 8, 12, 30, 35). When he used talk alone, Chrissie tended not to respond, but when he used talk and pointing, she almost always responded. Talk, then, within this lived event, was only a partially useful communicative device. As they played together, Edward increasingly used pointing gestures to prompt Chrissie, as it was in his interest to move the game forwards. The fourth main player in the activity was the computer game itself, which made many verbal contributions, and completed several actions, often accompanied by sound effects and always by on-screen transcrip-tions of the words uttered. Although Edward was reading words at home, neither he nor his peers appeared to notice the on-screen written language (just visible at the centre bot-tom of the screen in Figure 1), which replicated the words spoken by the voice-over. These written instructions were rendered redundant by the more dynamic presence of the spoken screen voice, which the children followed – even though their responses might not always have been those intended by the game designers (Lines 22–25).

Kress (2010: 9–10) suggests that there are some general semiotic principles common to all human communication, the most significant being ‘that humans make signs in which form and meaning stand in a “motivated” relation’. These conjunctions of form and mean-ing reflect both the interests of the sign-maker and the resources available, which vary from one cultural context to another. Context then is key to understanding modal use.

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304 Qualitative Research 11(3)T

able

1.

Mul

timod

al T

rans

crip

t

Line

no

&T

ime

Part

icip

ant

Gaz

e di

rect

ion

Act

ion

Lang

uage

/Sou

nds

(.) =

sho

rt p

ause

 1

48:1

8on

-scr

een

voic

e&pr

int

scre

ente

apot

aut

omat

ical

ly p

ours

tea

in c

upC

ongr

atul

atio

ns! N

ow t

he t

ea is

rea

dy t

o dr

ink.

(sl

urpi

ng s

ound

effe

cts,

um

hum

) T

hat

was

a d

elic

ious

cup

of t

ea!

 2Sc

reen

retu

rns

to m

enu,

offe

ring

four

gam

e op

tions

 3 48:3

8Ed

war

dsc

reen

poin

ts t

owar

ds o

n-sc

reen

icon

s no

w y

eah

(.) m

ake

toas

t

 4C

hris

sie

scre

enus

es m

ouse

to

clic

k on

toa

st ic

on 5

on-s

cree

n vo

ice&

prin

tU

se t

hese

thi

ngs

to m

ake

som

e to

ast.

 6 48.4

4Ed

war

dsc

reen

poin

ts t

o br

ead

icon

fir

st b

read

 7C

hris

sie

scre

enho

lds

mou

se b

ut d

oes

not

clic

k 8

Edw

ard

scre

ensc

ratc

hes

head

first

get

som

e br

ead

(.) t

hen

it to

asts

out

 9C

hris

sie

scre

enho

lds

mou

se b

ut d

oes

not

clic

k10

Edw

ard

scre

enle

ans

forw

ard,

poi

nts

to t

oast

er ic

on (

.) no

clic

k on

11 48

:55

on-s

cree

n vo

ice&

prin

tU

se t

hese

thi

ngs

to m

ake

som

e to

ast.

Wha

t do

you

do

first

?12

Edw

ard

lean

s fo

rwar

d an

d po

ints

to

plat

e &

kni

fe ic

on

now

…cl

ick

on

13on

-scr

een

voic

e&pr

int

Tak

e th

e to

ast

out

of t

he t

oast

er.

14 49.0

0Y

oung

er b

oysc

reen

wan

ders

in, l

eans

on

desk

to

left

of E

dwar

d

15Ed

war

dsc

reen

twid

dles

hai

rs

16C

hris

sie

scre

encl

icks

on

toas

ter

17Sc

reen

toas

t le

aps

from

toa

ster

to

the

plat

e(s

ound

effe

cts

as t

oast

mov

es o

n sc

reen

)18

on-s

cree

n vo

ice&

prin

tW

hat

will

you

do

now

?

19 49.1

0Y

oung

er b

oysc

reen

mov

es b

ehin

d Ed

war

d an

d C

hris

sie

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Flewitt 305

Tab

le 1

. (C

ontin

ued)

Line

no

&T

ime

Part

icip

ant

Gaz

e di

rect

ion

Act

ion

Lang

uage

/Sou

nds

(.) =

sho

rt p

ause

20C

hris

sie

scre

enm

oves

poi

nter

ove

r th

e bu

tter

(mut

ters

) I’l

l get

som

e bu

tter

21Y

oung

er b

oysc

reen

push

es r

ough

ly b

etw

een

Edw

ard

and

Chr

issi

e pu

lling

on

the

hood

of h

er c

ardi

gan

but

it’s

bori

ng (

the)

spi

der

22on

-scr

een

voic

e&pr

int

Wha

t w

ill y

ou d

o no

w?

23Y

oung

er b

oysc

reen

lurc

hes

acro

ss k

eybo

ard,

pus

hing

Chr

issi

e ou

t of

the

way

24on

-scr

een

voic

e&pr

int

Wha

t w

ill y

ou d

o no

w?

25 49.3

5Y

oung

er b

oysc

reen

reac

hes

forw

ard

and

switc

hes

off s

cree

n

26Ed

war

dsc

reen

rais

es h

is h

and

gent

ly t

o ba

ck o

f boy

’s h

ead

and

stro

kes

his

back

soo

thin

gly

27C

hris

sie

arou

nd

room

, bac

k to

scr

een

look

s cr

estf

alle

n, r

each

es fo

rwar

d an

d sw

itche

s sc

reen

bac

k on

28 49:4

0on

-scr

een

voic

e&pr

int

Wha

t w

ill y

ou d

o ne

xt?

29Y

oung

er b

oysc

reen

lean

s ac

ross

Edw

ard

30 49.4

4Ed

war

dsc

reen

Butt

er?

(.) y

ou n

eed

butt

er n

ext

(.) y

ou n

eed

butt

er n

ext

Chr

issi

e 31 49

:50

on-s

cree

n vo

ice&

prin

tSp

read

som

e bu

tter

on

the

toas

t.

(Con

tinue

d)

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306 Qualitative Research 11(3)

Tab

le 1

. (C

ontin

ued)

Line

no

&T

ime

Part

icip

ant

Gaz

e di

rect

ion

Act

ion

Lang

uage

/Sou

nds

(.) =

sho

rt p

ause

32Y

oung

er b

oysc

reen

trie

s to

con

trol

cur

sor

with

red

sw

itch

(=

a s

econ

d m

ouse

)33

Chr

issi

esc

reen

uses

mou

se t

o cl

ick

on b

utte

r 34

Scre

enon

-scr

een

knife

spr

eads

but

ter

on t

oast

(scr

apin

g so

und

effe

cts

as k

nife

spr

eads

but

ter)

35 50:0

0Ed

war

dsc

reen

now

jam

36on

-scr

een

voic

e&pr

int

Spre

ad s

ome

jam

on

the

toas

t.

37C

hris

sie

scre

encl

icks

, dra

gs ja

m o

nto

toas

t us

ing

mou

se38

Scre

en

spre

ads

jam

(scr

apin

g no

ise

as ja

m is

spr

ead)

39 50:1

0on

-scr

een

voic

e&pr

int

Wel

l don

e! N

ow t

he t

oast

is r

eady

to

eat.

40Ed

war

d sc

reen

, gl

ance

to

boy

jum

ps u

p an

d do

wn

exci

tedl

y pr

eten

ding

to

eat

toas

t

41Y

oung

er b

oyEd

war

dle

ans

forw

ards

, scr

ews

up m

ouse

mat

and

m

imic

s Ed

war

d, p

rete

nds

to n

ibbl

e m

ouse

mat

42on

-scr

een

voic

e&pr

int

Mm

m! T

hat

was

a c

runc

hy s

lice

of t

oast

!

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Flewitt 307

While the multimodal transcript shows at a level of micro analysis how the children’s interaction at the computer involved distinct uses of multiple modes, in order to under-stand why they made these particular semiotic choices we are reliant on the multiple lay-ers of ethnographic data which situate this micro-moment in the context of the beliefs and practices at play in one particular nursery within a system of early education in England.

Discussion

What particular insights then can the combination of ethnography and multimodality bring to the study of early literacy learning in a technological age? Certainly in my search for a methodology to investigate how young children develop literacy as they go about their everyday lives, I found that semiotic analysis alone was not enough. A focus on semiosis could show what choices children made, and what modes were made avail-able to them through diverse traditional and ‘new’ literacy texts in diverse media, but this constituted ‘thin’ descriptions which situated the production and reception of meanings within physical and material social settings, but did not make accessible more holistic insights into their literacy learning.

For this deeper level of understanding, the study was dependent on ethnographic data, which constituted a rich backstory of how networks of cultural and social values perme-ated the children’s homes and nursery. While multimodal analysis captured something of the communicative complexity of the studied field, ethnographic approaches to data col-lection and interpretation helped to situate that complexity in particular social, cultural and historical contexts. Together, they revealed how national and local documentation, adult beliefs and practices, the physical arrangement of rooms and the spaces within set-tings all shaped children’s movements and uses of multiple modes as they engaged with literacy artefacts within those spaces. Furthermore, ethnography provided a reflexive framework for understanding the complexity of social phenomena, which helped this study to stay ‘faithful’ to the phenomena under investigation (Blumer, 1954) by taking into account participant perspectives on the children’s literacy learning. This safe-guarded against the ‘webs of significance’ identified through the research process being spun from an entirely ‘outsider’ perspective.

I argue then that the combination of ethnographic and multimodal approaches pro-vides a powerful set of tools for understanding the diverse layers of social orders and meanings that are sensitive to local forms of action and representation, and that reveal how the ways in which adults position and promote literacy artefacts – from policy level down to the micro-level of moment-by-moment interaction – has deep effects on children’s multimodal engagement with literacy in different modes and media.

However, the dialogue that results from the partnership between ethnography and mul-timodality, like all partnerships, is punctuated with ambivalences and potential tensions. Both approaches adopt more fluid concepts of text than comfortably bounded, linguistic notions of language-based entities, but they do so in different ways. As discussed earlier, there is wide variation not only in ethnographic understandings of what constitutes a text, but also in what constitutes ethnography. However, if one accepts the notion of culture-as-text, there is compatibility between multimodal and ethnographic understandings of ‘text’ as semiotic instantiations of lived practices: the main difference lying in where the bound-aries of text are drawn, depending on the scope and focus of the research endeavour.

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In the very brief data extracts cited above, I have discussed how multimodality extends the analysis of texts to consideration of the processes of their production, the affordances of their different modal components and how these shape and are shaped by socially constructed norms and practices. The multimodal transcript unravels how the children’s uses of different modes are interdependent and are shaped by the particular circumstances of their activity – how Edward is motivated to select the modes of embod-ied action alongside particular patterns of speech in order to progress the game, while gaze exchange is made redundant by the presence of the screen. With regard to the on-screen text, Edward pays no attention to the written mode (which we know from the ethnographic data that he could probably read) because its presence is rendered redun-dant by the dynamism of the spoken voice-over. We are further reliant on the ethno-graphic data to see how this instance of literacy learning with new technologies is situated in a broader constellation of everyday literacy practices.

Just as ethnography addresses the complexity of socially situated activity, so mul-timodality describes and analyses the complexity of how multiple modes are used as organized resources within cultures. For the researcher, this combination therefore results in a lot of complexity. Extensive data sets in multiple media have to be reported selectively in primarily visual and verbal formats, and during this process much of the sensory, emotive and cognitive complexity of the phenomenological experience of being in the field is lost – at best reduced to subjective evocations through ethno-graphic forms of reporting, such as narrative accounts and vignettes. When combined with multimodality, there is a further risk that cultural complexity is over-simplified in the search for semiotic solutions, that the reporting skews the phenomenological experience to suit the multimodal ethnographer’s biography and research aims. While acknowledging subjectivity and including participant perspectives may help to coun-ter this and reduce speculation or ‘writing culture’, current research reporting formats remain subject to researchers’ (informed) interpretations. Innovative solutions to these tensions have begun to emerge, such as the use of hypertext links that permit the inclu-sion of raw data for readers of research texts to scrutinize, although this extension of data access has profound implications for research ethics, particularly confidential-ity and protecting against potential harm to research participants (e.g. Dicks and Mason, 1998).

To conclude, I argue that to understand early literacy development in the rich diver-sity of media that now characterize contemporary literacy practices, new methodologi-cal solutions are needed. Research must pay heed to the complexity of the influences on the communicative choices that children make, how their modal choices are shaped by the physical and human resources in those spaces and by broader social and cultural influences. In this study, the combination of multimodality and ethnography is permit-ting rich and grounded insights into the highly complex layering of dynamic multimodal discursive and social processes that constitute young children’s literacy learning at home and in early education. The main methodological challenges now lie in the continuing description of how culture, communicative modes and literacy practices are intertwined, along with the development of more collaborative models of constructing and reporting analyses, that remain faithful both to the messiness of ethnographic data and the complexity of multimodal communication, while remaining digestible and meaningful for research audiences.

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Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful to Sylvia Wolfe, who worked on this project during data collection and early stages of analysis, and to Lesley Lancaster, Janet Maybin, Lynne Cameron and Caroline Coffin for their comments on early drafts of this article.

Notes

1. Multimodal Literacies in the Early Years funded by Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC RES-000-22-2451).

2. All names have been changed for anonymity.3. Not all children in the study with good computer skills were from such affluent backgrounds:

the closest link found in our survey and interview data between children’s use of new technolo-gies and family background appeared to be the main carer’s interests and level of education. These did not necessarily correspond to socio-economic status.

4. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) website offers a range of children’s interactive games, stories and activities, many of which are linked to popular children’s television programmes. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebieshttp://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies

5. In English Early Education, a Keyworker is assigned to each child (usually up to 6 children in total per Keyworker), with particular responsibility for home-school liaison, observations and record-keeping for each child.

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