009. Critical Reading in Everyday Texts

This e-learning task was attempted as a pairwork by Jess and I.
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Voloshinov (1986) mentioned that,
"written texts are not neutral, transparent windows
on the realities of the social and natural world."

This is agreed upon Allan Luke (1995) as he says that written texts are refractive in the way that they "actively construct and represent the world." Thus construing the fact that being able to read critically is an important skill to acquire such that one will be able to uncover the underlying ideologies, reality and relationship depicted by the text makers in a particular cultural context.

Following Freebody and Luke’s (1990) four‐part model for “Reading as Critical Social Practice”, I will attempt to analyse a multimodal advertisement that was found at bus-stop stands in Singapore using the 4 elements of the model - Coding, Semantic, Pragmatic, and Critical Competences.

Coding Competence (How do I crack this?)
Firstly, there is a danger sign pasted right in the middle of a popular handheld game set, and even if one is illiterate, there is a icon with an exclamation mark, which non-arbitrarily relates to the action of 'warning'. Furthermore, the danger sign made use of colours like yellow and black to emphasize the warning as the two colours have a non-arbitrary relationship with danger (Just like bees). Framing was used to separate the word 'Danger' and the icon from the rest of the text. The word 'Danger' and the icon are emphasized through the use of a larger font size and it is placed right at the top of the whole text. The next most prominent message has the second largest font size and the two-liner text is placed right in the center of the whole text. Textually, the message is to be read in a left-right directionality, which is usually the norm for texts.

At the bottom left, there's a small logo belonging to Health Promotion Board, the initiators of the advertisement.

Semantic Competence (What does this mean?)

On the danger sign, we can see the following message,

DANGER
PROLONGED USE MAY HARM CHILDREN'S EYES.
Minimise time spent on unnecessary near work such as playing handphone or handheld computer games. Instead, encourage your child to spend more time outdoors.
Keep myopia at bay, go outdoors and play.

Armed with a basic alphabetic, spelling, punctuation knowledge and phonemic and phonological awareness, one will be able understand that the message is trying to say that devices such as handheld computer games and handphones may harm children's eyes in the long run and lead to myopia. Children are better off playing outdoors.
Pragmatic Competence (What do I do with this, here and now?)

By pasting the danger sign on the handheld game set, the advertisers are trying to show that there is some sort of danger lurking in the handheld game set. But is the gaming devices really so dangerous to children that it deserves to be pasted with a ‘Danger’ sign? From the message, it does not seem to be that dangerous since only ‘prolonged’ use MAY harm children’s eyes. Maybe the message has less to do with myopia than getting parents to let their children lead a more active lifestyle. The reason for saying so is based on the advice given by the Health Promotion Board that parents should “instead, encourage your child to spend more time outdoors. Keep myopia at bay, go outdoors and play”.

Critical Competence (What is the text trying to do to me? In whose interests?)

This illustrates the multimodality of this advertisement which uses image and text to achieve the effects they want on its audience. The image is cleverly used so that the ad makers do not need to explicitly spell out what is harmful, the audience can see for themselves. The likely target audience of this advertisement is parents/caregivers of children as they are usually the ones who indulge their children in these devices, which results in their children’s addiction to these gaming devices. Due to the authority of parents, it is also assumed that they have the ability to remove such harmful devices from their children’s life.

The power play in this advertisement is between the Health Promotion Board and the parents/caregivers, who are supposedly the target audience. The Health Promotion Board, being a government body, is seen to be more knowledgeable in this particular domain than the general public, thus when they are trying to appeal to the parents/ caregivers to take care of their children’s eyes, their message is given in the form of a warning. This can be seen from the prominent use of imperatives in the text.

It seems like the text is genuinely based on the interests of the children as they are the pillars of the nation, therefore, their general health and even possible addiction to gaming (which is seen as a vice here) will affect the productivity of the country in future.

Critical reading activities (Sec 2 students)

Firstly, to start off a critical reading session with this target audience, the selection of the everyday text(s) must be one that is relevant and of interest to them. We also recall the concept of ‘hybridity’ in our selection of the texts. In this case, three texts bearing messages of anti-drug abuse have been selected. They were selected because the intention and message of the writer of these texts have been made known in secondary schools but in different modes (usually in the form of speeches or presentations). It would then be interesting for the students to decode and make meaning of these texts that are presented in a different form.

It is clearly shown that these texts bear a resemblance to some children narratives that are sold in the bookstores. A possible interpretation could be that children narratives have always been seen as fairytales/far-fetched stories, imaginative etc. Basically, these stories do not have an impact or influence on readers. Such thinking could be perceived by many non-drug users these days whereby they think that drug abuse does not concern them or there is no possibility that they could be one. However, this text, with the type of words and semantic structure seem to suggest otherwise. It gives the possibility that anyone could be a drug user, and when you are one, the good life you had previously would be gone. The names and characters portrayed by the images bears relation to anyone who shares the same lifestyle as the characters mentioned.

The critical reading model that was mentioned above could be used to help the students critically read this message as they seek to learn their roles as a code breaker, text participant, text user and text analyst. The teacher first introduces what each element of competence entails and uses simpler texts to illustrate. Next, for the actual activity of the above selected texts, the ‘Jigsaw’ approach could be used. The students can be grouped into the respective four competencies to discuss what the text means in each element of competency. Next, the four groups are re-grouped to form smaller groups which comprises of a member of each competency group. They can then, together, form their interpretation or meaning of the text.

Some questions that the students may ask when they are in their element of competency group are:
-What message does the image gives?
-What genre of text is this text similar to? Why does the writer choose to use this similarity?

-What message is he trying to bring across through this similarity?
-What is your first impression of this text?
-Does the intended message of this text match the first –impression of this text? What is the meaning and reason behind this mis-match?
-What is being foregrounded and backgrounded in the texts?
-What kind of function do the words in the text do?