42
Yannicopoulou (2004) examined visual literacy in school children as it relates to the reading of comics/graphic novel texts. 350 pre-school children “were personally interviewed regarding four variables of visual conventions common not only in comics but also in many multimodal materials preschool-ers encounter” (Yannicopoulou, 2004, p. 175). Overall, across all four categories of volume, words, language, and emotions depicted in the panels for identification, the children scored well over 70 percent correct indicating that the preschoolers possessed both a high degree of familiarity with the comic book conventions and the visual literacy required to derive intended meaning from texts which they could not read in printed language. Yannicopoulou (2004) concludes that:
Traditional teachers who limit their
understanding of literacy to decoding the
signs of the written language, must
recognize that ‘reading’ had been expanded
to reader-viewers who exploit verbal and
visual hints in the texts they read. The
challenge of multimodality should change
the concept of what ‘reading’ is and how it is
taught in schools. (p. 189)
Dallacqua (2012) conducted her research with 70 fifth graders in a small, Midwestern parochial school. She was interested in the gutters, or empty spaces, that generally exist between panels of comics as elucidated by McCloud (1993). She was supported in her thinking by Rosenblatt’s (1982) reader-response theory. Dallacqua (2012) found “these literal gaps, or gutters, in graphic novels provided ample opportunities for reader to engage and contribute to the storytelling” (p. 370). She credits Sipe and Brightman (2009) for work with children and picture books grounded in reader-response theory. According to Dallacqua (2012) this work “led to the theory that allowing young readers to fill in the gaps at page breaks of picture books may enrich meaning-making and invite high-level inferencing skills” (p. 369). Dallacqua determined that her readers were able to negotiate the multimodal comic texts and distinguish many literary devices common to the traditional print texts that they had studied previously in school. Point of view, allusion, symbolism, metaphor, mood, flashback and foreshadowing were all literary elements the students were able to identify and explain in relation to the specific occurrences in the graphic novels under study.
Connors (2013) “sought to identify the semiotic resources six high school students drew upon as they read four graphic novels in the context of a voluntary after-school reading group” (p. 34). Connors used reader response journals, transcripts of the reading group discussions, and transcripts of individual member interviews to build his data base using categories of design established by the New London Group (1996). Connors (2013) searched for recurring patterns and deter-mined that all six participants dealt with ele-ments of the comics’ multimodal text “as meaning-making resources available to them in the visual design of the graphic novels…” and that “…in interacting with the graphic novel’s linguistic design they tended to read in a manner that called to mind Rosenblatt’s (1978) theory of transactional reading" (Connors, 2013, p. 38). Connors concludes with a challenge to educators:
To revisit their definitions of literacy and
ask whether they are willing to extend that
term to include transactions with sign
systems beyond written language. The
implications of doing so are profound, not
least because it raises the question of
whether schools are currently preparing
students to read and write in a broad sense.
(Connors, 2013, p. 49)
"...her readers were able to
negotiate the multimodal
comic texts and distinguish
many literary devices common
to the traditional print texts
that they had studied
previously in school."