Guidelines for actively reading an image or a multimodal text
Previewing a multimodal text
- First impressions. What
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strikes you right away? What is the overall effect of the text?
- Composer. Who composed the text? What are the composer’s credentials?
- Genre. What kind of text is it: An advertisement? A photograph? A video? A podcast?
- Purpose. What is the text’s purpose: To persuade? To inform? To entertain? If the text is an advertisement, what product or idea is it selling?
- Audience. Who is the target audience? What assumptions are made about the audience?
- Context. Where was the text originally published or viewed?
- Design. What seems most prominent in the text’s design?
Annotating a multimodal text
- Design elements. What design features do you notice? How do various design elements—colors, shapes, words, images, sound—help convey the text’s meaning and serve its purpose? What are the relationships among the parts? Focus on one design element at a time to help you understand its role in the text and your response to it.
- Audience. What clues suggest the text’s targeted audience? What assumptions does the text make about its audience? What is the audience being asked to do, feel, question, or believe?
- Thesis or message. What is the text’s thesis, central idea, or message? How do the design elements work together to reveal and illustrate this idea or message?
Conversing with a multimodal text
- What are the strengths of the text?
- What are the limitations of the text? What is puzzling or incomplete about the text’s treatment of the subject matter?
- Does the text raise questions that it does not resolve?
- What
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assumptions does the text make about its audience? Are these assumptions valid?
- How does the design of the image or multimodal text shape your reaction to it?