much of the value adding that is the key feature of upcycling. Here the material of the artefact, namely plastic, has provenance in discourses of ethical consumerism (Archer & Björkvall 2018). Something as natural as water is a scarce resource in some global contexts and has become fashionably commodified into a branded product for consumption in others. Plastic water bottles are rife and are a scourge on the environment, but here they are upcycled to make something beautiful and of value. The colour blue is foregrounded, keeping the resonances of both the plastic bottle and the water it contained. The plastic and the silver weave together like ripples in water, creating a sense of movement, transparency, and translucency. These bangles and other products upcycled from waste materials indicate alignment with and indeed cite larger discourses of ethical consumerism, given the provenance of the upcycled materials.
I have argued that citation can be thought of in terms of the semiotic terms transduction and transformation of meaning material. In addition, I have emphasized that citation is crucial to academic voice as it concerns positioning oneself in relation to others, as well as in relation to particular conventions. This can be achieved through the provenance of semiotic resources chosen and the discourses that these resources index. Tabelle 1 below summarizes the framework for academic voice across writing, image, infographics and designed artefacts. Writing, images and information graphics are often co-present in texts in Higher Education. The types of texts realized predominantly through writing, however, include academic essays and reports. Those realized predominantly through images could be powerpoint presentations, storyboards, posters. Information graphics are present in texts in economics and the social sciences and others. Designed artefacts are specific to certain disciplines. There are, of course, other aspects of academic voice besides authorial engagement and citation. For instance, modality is another aspect to consider, the perceived credibility and truth value of a text. However, for the sake of analytical clarity, this particular framework only works with two aspects.
Abbildung 6: Provenance and materiality (Plastic water bottle and sterling silver bangles. Mikhela Hawker)
| Aspect of Academic Voice | Realization through writing | Realization through image | Realization through information graphic | Realization through designed artefact |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Authorial engagement Authorial engagement concerns the extent to which authors choose to engage with their audiences and subject matter, «their degree of intimacy or remoteness, and the ways they represent themselves in the discourse» (Hyland, 1999, 101). | Attitude markers – attitude verbs, necessity modals, adjectives Pronouns / person markers Active or passive voice Relational markers (e.g. rhetorical questions) Visual aspect of writing: typography, spelling, punctuation, white space. | Type and choice of image Composition – salience, spatial positioning (left, right, top, bottom, centre, periphery), directionality of vectors, framing Direct / indirect address by represented participants Point of view (Objective/subjective) Use of colour (e.g. colour saturation) | What is measured and summarized? Type and choice of graphic (e.g. pie charts, bar charts, line diagrams) Composition: ways of ordering (alphabetical or magnitude); positioning of elements (title, axes, legend) Relation between graphic and writing (footnotes, title, legend, labels) | Material choices Surface of the artefact Substance of the artefact Tools of production |
| Citation Citation involves appropriating a source into your own argument and thus creating a new composition, which necessarily has intertextual relations. | Quoting – number, length and function Paraphrasing – summary or generalization Integrated versus non-integrated citation | Transformation (Quoting or copying an image) Transduction: Paraphrasing (clip art, drawing over existing image); written into visual (flow diagrams) | Data generated empirically and no citation necessary Integration of own data with cited data Data compiled from multiple sources | Negotiation with authoritative conventions (such as big names, art periods, specific genres) Sensory and connotative provenance |
Tabelle 1: A framework for looking at academic voice in multimodal texts
Final comments
This chapter has proposed a way of recognizing and analyzing resources drawn on in producing voice in a range of genres and modes. Voice is about negotiating amongst a set of choices. Allowing students the opportunity to work with various media can enable them to experiment with the properties of these and exploit their affordances in more mindful ways. To develop academic voice, students can be encouraged to recognize constraints – both working within them and using a variety of resources to counterbalance them. My aim has been partly to look for semiotic categories that work across modes in order to devise metalanguages for teaching and learning. These include the concepts of engagement; citation; provenance; transformation; transduction. Most importantly, a metalanguage gives one the tools to think about things in ways that we would not otherwise have had. In this sense metalanguages serve as a way of «verbalising what you know in relation to other ways of knowing» (Thesen 2001, 143). This is important for enabling student access into academic discourse. It can also have important implications for assessment practices. Effective teaching of writing and text construction in all its forms thus involves a dialogue between the culture and discourses of academia and those of students, offering students from diverse backgrounds an empowering and critical experience, not just pathways to established conventions.
References
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