This article addresses key theoretical and practical concerns related to the intercultural encounter with multimodal literature. Previous efforts to incorporate an intercultural dimension into ...conceptualisations of literary literacy have primarily focused on competences associated with the reading of traditional, script-based texts. However, as the term “literature” is today associated with a wide range of new media texts, there is a need to take this into account in theoretical constructs as well as in pedagogical practice. The article provides insight into how the multimodal elements of film function as a complex meaning-making ensemble which adds layers of potential insight as well as potential misunderstanding to the text interpretation process. With a basis in the Model of the Intercultural Reader (Hoff, 2016), the article sheds light on how issues related to the narrative style and structure of a Hollywood motion picture can be navigated through an exploration of the recognisable audio-visual rhetoric of oft-repeated tropes. Drawing on Baz Luhrmann’s film Romeo + Julietas a practical example, concrete suggestions for pedagogical practice are offered. By integrating practices of script-based intercultural reading with new literacies, the article expands upon previous theorisations of the intercultural reader and provides insight into how teachers may facilitate nuanced intercultural explorations of literary multimodal texts in the 21stcentury language classroom.
This article contributes to current research on the use of graphic narratives for intercultural education with young adult learners in English Language Teaching. The article focuses on When Stars are ...Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed (2020).
According to Mark Millington, 'The sense is that what is produced by transculturation or hybridization does not fit within neat binaries, that it straddles, mixes and disrupts.'1 While not bound to ...any particular historical period, transculturation is of particular relevance to the types and themes of literature that have emerged in the past twenty years: literature that can no longer be conceived of as simply postcolonial. ...I would like to express a special and heartfelt 'thank you' to Gillian Dooley for her support throughout the past year, and for her careful and perceptive work as an editor. 2 The NNLTS is administered from the Institute for Foreign Languages at the University of Bergen, Norway, and funded through 2012 by Nordforsk, an organisation under the Nordic Council of Ministers that promotes Nordic research cooperation.
Research recently conducted at the University of Stavanger found that teachers of English at upper secondary schools experience difficulty in getting their students to read longer fictional texts, ...and have witnessed negative attitudes towards reading. At the same time, the past four years have shown a 22% decline in enrolment across Norway in the Literature and Culture subject in the third year of upper secondary. How can the objectives set out in the basic skills section of the English subject specialization program—“understanding, exploring and pondering demanding texts”—be met if students are losing the cognitive mode of deep attention that helps them read novels and other longer texts? As digital reading has proven to be sloppy, and exhaustive reading is rare online, to what extent can students be expected to gain “insight across cultures and special fields”? Can the overall aims for teaching literature in the ESL classroom, especially those aims regarding the ability to ponder and gain insight, still be achieved through new media and popular culture? This study raises questions concerning the future of reading and offers a critical literacy approach through which teachers and learners can investigate different types of media. Implementing a critical literacy approach in the ESL classroom offers rich possibilities for teaching both language and culture at all levels through both traditional and new media.
This article presents a summary of research conducted on the visual representation of indigenous cultures in four English textbooks produced for lower secondary schools with the aim of investigating ...the extent to which images of indigenous people contribute to, or contradict, the general cultural aims of the English language learning curriculum in Norway. Over 800 textbook images were analyzed using the methods of visual content analysis and semiotic image analysis. A qualitative analysis of two photomontages also provides a more holistic approach to the study and helps to more clearly explain the quantitative results. The results from the research show a strong trend to focus on traditional aspects of indigenous people, a tendency to represent indigenous people in a lower position of power than the viewer, and to distance the viewer. Comparatively, the images of white people more frequently invite the viewer to interact and empathize with the participants. Consequently, the research concludes that the images in the four EFL textbooks analyzed are, to a large degree, potential carries of ideologies in direct contradiction to the general cultural aims of English language learning in Norway. The implications of these findings are that images and how they position readers should be a part of EFL teaching.
This study is a comparative analysis of four contemporary authors who have claimed The Thousand and One Nights as their favorite text: Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, John Barth, and Salman ...Rushdie. These authors also share an interest in the process of narrativity and concern for the future of the novel that have led them to adopt the narrative model of the Nights in their own fiction in order to suggest the possibility of infinite storytelling. The introduction to this study provides an overview of the potentially infinite narrative model presented in The Thousand and One Nights. I argue that Shahrazad's basic techniques for her never-ending storytelling, rather than following the design of the "frame tale," more closely resemble the structure of the arabesque. The notion of an arabesque narrative that continually generates stories is also central to my analyses of Borges, Calvino, Barth and Rushdie. Chapter one discusses Jorge Luis Borges' engagement with the Nights and the concept of infinity in relation to his interests in philosophy and science. His short story collections El jardin de senderos que se bifurcan and El Aleph demonstrate his definition of the infinite in narrative as that which surpasses textual boundaries. Chapter two looks at the structural aspects of Italo Calvino's Le città invisibili and Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore, which point towards an infinite space for story creation while reclaiming the crucial role of the storyteller in seducing the reader and perpetuating the narrative. Chapter three examines Barth's later novels, all of which refer either directly or indirectly to the Nights, to show how his narrators defy both the death of the story and the death of the teller. The fourth chapter discusses Salman Rushdie's exploitation of the Nights as a metaphor for infinity in his novels and analyzes Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses and Haroun and the Sea of Stories as proponents of narrative multiplicity and regeneration. In conclusion, I argue that these authors refute Frank Kermode's "sense of an ending" in favor of stories that point to the "plus one" of narrative demonstrated by Shahrazad's regenerative narrative arabesque.
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