Exploring the intentionality of design in the graphic narrative of one middle-years student

Abstract

The classroom-based research featured in this article explores how the development of student understanding of elements of visual art and design affected their comprehension, interpretation and analysis of multimodal texts, as well as the subsequent production of student-generated texts created in the medium of comics. This article presents the case study of Jarvinia, one of the grade 7 research participants, and focuses on her semiotic decision making when she designed a graphic narrative for the culminating activity of the research. Multi-literacies, multimodality, social semiotics and sociocultural theory framed the study as well as the descriptive analysis and discussion of the intentionality of Jarvinia’s meaning-making. A colour photocopy of Jarvinia’s graphic narrative and two interview transcripts constituted the sources of data that were examined to explore her text-making as a process of design. The findings from the descriptive case study reveal the intentionality of Jarvinia’s semiotic work when working with the medium of comics, and demonstrate how learning a metalanguage to talk about elements of visual art and design, and conventions of the medium of comics can inform more critical descriptions, interpretations and analysis of texts.

Keywords:

• graphic narrative
• medium of comics
• classroom-based research
• multimodality
• social semiotics

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sylvia Pantaleo

Sylvia Pantaleo is a Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in language and literacy, and children’s literature.