Exegesis (draft)
Successful communication has always been the result of combined written text and brilliant visual communication. To penetrate the audience and to be able to be absorbed by it, right communication skills are always and at all time crucial. In order to achieve a great visual exposure to the public, it is significantly important to consider and follow the works of the theorists including Walsh, Putnis & Petelin, Reep and Kress. In this essay, I will be talking about how I engaged their theories with the artifacts on the Emily Post Etiquettes: Teas and Other Afternoon Parties, Etiquette in a Bar and Job interview.
As my artifacts will be multimodal, I will stretch the space of this particular theorist in this essay into a bigger one, to give a better view perspective of my work. In her theory, Walsh (2006) talks about the differences between print-based texts and multimodal texts within the context of changed literacy and practices. She explains in detail the aspects of a novel, a picture book, Internet sites and electronic digital texts. In this article, Walsh expands her theory of the reading in the multimodal environment, the process and the reading, explaining how readers respond to different texts. However, she also acknowledged that further research was needed to examine how reading is constructed by these texts. To invest in a better reading of the multimodal texts, it is very important that the spoken/written language blends in harmony with the visuals and the sounds. Kress (2008, pp. 59-60) claims that communication has always been multi-semiotic and as much as text is important, images not only are as important as text but also how they are fused together. Also, O’Halloran & Smith (p. 2) claim that multimodal deals with interaction and integration of two or more semiotic resources in order to achieve the intent of the communication.
Following the above theorists, I had in mind interaction, integration and fusion when I decided on my artifact for my “Teas and Other Afternoon Parties”. Therefore, I chose to make tea party invites with little ‘tea party rules’ in the card to suit it to the audience. To integrate the message and fuse the artifact with the text I decided to not only have the cupcake theme but also bake cupcakes and bring teapot and cups and also play the mad hatter scene from Alice in Wonderland. The invites are simple, very inviting to read with pictures of cupcakes and teapots/cups. The images are proportioned with the actual invite size and also with the text. Chosen colors are ‘soft’ and the text short and very easy to read – it is a party, no one wants to read a novel on the card. The balance is not monotonous from one invite to another but they also have a weight balance following the four points of ‘weight’ (Reep, 2006, p. 135).
For the Etiquette in a bar I initially thought that the best way to communicate the etiquettes of the bar would be on the bottom of the receipt and also should appear. I think it would be cute on each receipt to receive a “tip” on how to “behave properly”. But then I came to the conclusion that maybe that idea wasn’t that good: by the time you have bought the drink you might’ve already “misbehaved”. This leaded me to the idea that the bar should have a frame with all bar etiquettes at the entrance, to be read when entering the bar. For this etiquette I followed the theory of Putnis & Petelin (1996, p. 233), ‘writing as a problem-solving process’. In this theory, Putnis & Petelin explain how to use writing strategies to problem solving. They claim that the process of writing in academic and professional contexts writers must constantly ask questions to themselves, such as the following: Where will I get my information? How will I structure or sequence it? How will I begin writing? How will I design it for my readers and how will I achieve the appropriate tone? In asking these questions to myself I found these answers: My information is the etiquettes from Emily Post. I will structure it in the simplest way, easy and pleasant to read. I will begin writing with a title: “How to be a lady and how to be a gentleman”. I will design it very simple. I will achieve an appropriate tone maybe by including a lady/gentleman touch; something delicate, something fine. Something that is un-common these days. So I will use handwriting. Delicate and fine handwriting on premium paper framed with a refined taste.
The only images that will be on the right and left of the frame, will be a silhouette of a man with his hand on the hat and a bow tie and an amazing drawing of a silhouette of a classy woman from Karl Lagerfeld the legend designer of Chanel. In “Five ways to integrate prose and graphic, Schriver talks about the first key relationship of prose and graphic which is the “redundant” one. This key is characterized by identical content visually and verbally. Researches show that people’s comprehension is better if content is served with integrated graphics and text. The images that I have picked to complement the text are very much integrated with the text; they represent high class and elegance, as the etiquettes are “manners rules”. It appears that if information is taken in in more than one-way, it is better understood and also easier to remember. This way the reader has a stronger connection with the content and the memory. In my week 13-artifact presentation the artifact will be accompanied with the soundtrack of the American series ‘Mad Men’, which was set in the 1960’s and is very well known as a high-class show. The soundtrack is by David Carbonara and is called ‘Lipstick’. I chose this particular soundtrack because it just blends perfectly with the etiquettes – it is so redundant.
References:
1. Walsh, M., 2006, ‘The ‘textual shift’: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts.’ [online] Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, v.29 n.1 p.24-37
2. Kress, G 1997, ‘Visual and verbal modes of representation in electronically mediated communication: the potentials of new form of text’ in Page to screen: taking literacy into the electronic era, Snyder, ed Ilana, Allen and Unwin, St Leopards, pp. 59-60
3. O’Halloran K & Smith BA, Multimodal text analysis, viewed online 22 September 2011 <http://multimodal-analysis-lab.org/_docs/encyclopedia/01-Multimodal_Text_Analysis-O'Halloran_and_Smith.pdf>
4. Reep, D.C., 2006, Technical Writing 6edn, Ch. 6: Document design, p. 135, New York, USA, p. 135
5. Putnis, P & Petelin, R 1996, ‘Writing to communicate’, Professional communication: principles and applications, Prentice Hall, Sydney, p. 233
6. Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating text for readers. The interplay of words and pictures, Ch. 6 p. 412, Wiley Computer Pub, New York [electronic version]
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