1. Bringing the “Transhistorical” to Multimodal Studies

In recent years, the field of literacy studies has seen a growing turn towards transhistorical approaches, whereby apparently ‘new’ literacy practices are explained and contextualised within longer historical trajectories. In Message and Medium, Tagg and Evans (2020) claim that, through transhistorical approaches, it is possible to find certain elements of human behaviour that transcend historical boundaries because messages are always grounded in human experience and practice and informed by antecedents in the communicative histories of the individual and community.

Scholars are increasingly recognising that what we do on social media is not new and has been done before, albeit with different affordances and constraints. Studies on SMS texts by Hjorth (2005), letter-writing and email by Golden (2010) and Milne (2010), postcards by Gillen (2013) and telephone by Fischer (1994) have all brought attention to these parallels between contemporary and historical literacy practices. While this research is groundbreaking and is revolutionising the way that we understand literacy, to date, few studies have used multimodal methodologies to explore these similarities. In general, multimodality has prioritised investigations of digital technologies and the semiotic and material resources and strategies that users employ to perform identity online. My research on Edwardian book inscriptions has shed new light on the way that people have historically used a combination of the visual and verbal to perform identity and carry out complex literacy acts. This has been possible thanks to my creation of a multimodal ethnohistorical approach.

A multimodal ethnohistorical approach brings together Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1996) social semiotic approach to multimodality with a deep investigation of archival documents, such as censuses, vital certificates, and military records. In doing so, it moves multimodality beyond text-centred analyses because choices of image, colour, typography, and materiality, as well as hypotheses concerning the function and form of artefacts, are grounded in concrete historical evidence.

While visual social semiotics is still an extremely valuable research methodology for exploring multimodal texts, many scholars (e.g. Bezemer and Jewitt, 2010; Machin, 2016) recognise that multimodal analysis can only ever form one part of an interdisciplinary whole which must also encompass other theories and methodologies. This is because it has a tendency to neglect genre conventions, sociocultural context, canons of use and comparisons of modes. Furthermore, as Dicks et al. have pointed out, although the framework invokes and relies on the social, it does not in itself “provide a base of social evidence.” This means that analyses can be interpretative and subjective with a limited awareness of historically specific meanings, as well as how meanings can shift or stay the same over time.

As ethnohistory starts from the premise that writing cannot and should not be considered as separate from its contexts of use or users, it can provide social semiotics with concrete evidence to deconstruct multimodal texts in meaningful and predictive ways within the context of wider social and political forces. On the other hand, social semiotics can offer ethnography a robust set of theorised analytical tools with established terminology to describe texts less anecdotally and reveal how the intricacies of sociocultural norms, relationships and identities play out through semiotic and material resources. In short, a multimodal ethnohistorical approach can facilitate the accurate reconstruction of cultural practices by blending synchronic analysis with diachronic evidence. In doing so, it can offer a more human interpretation of the meaning of texts that is more individualised and more sensitive to the voices of the underrepresented, while also demonstrating that signs are always “shaped by the histories and values of societies and their cultures” (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996, p. 34).

The six stages of the multimodal ethnohistorical approach are outlined below in relation to my own study of book inscriptions, but it can be applied to any historical text or artefact. If you are interested in reading more on its application, I have included some references at the end to my use of the framework in the study of bookplates, school exercise books, dip pens, food packaging/advertising and rock t-shirts:

Over the past five years, I have used my multimodal ethnohistorical approach to reconstruct the lives of almost 3,000 Edwardians and explore what specific inscriptive practices and owner’s semiotic and material choices can reveal about class relations in Edwardian Britain. Now, as part of an ESRC postdoctoral fellowship and under the mentorship of Dr Tereza Spilioti, my research is turning towards applying this approach to compare historical inscriptive practices and modern-day social media practices. This short blog series will serve as an exploratory platform for me to put forward some of my preliminary findings through one particular focus each week. I hope it will offer a site of reflection for readers on the fact that there is much more that connects us and our ancestors than divides us.

References:

Bezemer, J. and Jewitt, C. 2010. “Multimodal analysis: key issues,” In: Litosseliti, L. ed., Research Methods in Linguistics. London: Continuum, pp. 180-197.

Dicks, B., Flewitt, R., Lancaster, L., and Pahl, K. 2011. Multimodality and ethnography: working at the intersection, Qualitative Research, 11(3), pp. 227-237.

Fischer, C. 1994. America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940, University of California Press.

Gillen, J. 2013. Writing Edwardian Postcards, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 17(4), pp. 488-521.

Golden, C. 2010. Posting it: The Victorian Revolution in Letter Writing, University Press of Florida.

Hjorth, M. 2005. Locating Mobility: Practices of co-presence and the persistence of the postal metaphor in SMS/ MMS mobile phone customization in Melbourne, The Fibreculture Journal, http://six.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-035-locating-mobility-practices-of-co-presence-and-the-persistence-of-the-postal-metaphor-in-sms-mms-mobile-phone-customization-in-melbourne/

Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, Routledge.

Machin, D. 2016. The need for a social and affordance-driven multimodal critical discourse studies, Discourse and Society, 27(3), pp. 322-334.

Milne, E. 2010. Letters, Postcards, Email: Technologies of Presence, Routledge.

Tagg and Evans, 2020. Message and Medium: English Language Practices Across Old and New Media, de Gruyter.

Further Reading:

O’Hagan, L. 2019. Pure in Body, Pure in Mind? A Sociohistorical Perspective on the Marketisation of Pure Foods in Great Britain, Discourse, Context and Media, 34, https://bit.ly/3dsNeoo.

O’Hagan, L. 2019. ‘Running Down an American Dream: Tom Petty and the Tour T-Shirt’, in Sands, C. (ed.) America’s Storyteller: Critical Essays on Tom Petty. McFarland & Co., pp. 79-99.

O’Hagan, L. 2018. The Dip Pen as a Source of Social Distinction in Victorian Britain, History of Retailing and Consumption, 4(3), pp. 187-216.

O’ Hagan, L. 2018. “Clean nails are the mark of a well brought-up girl”: Exploring Gender in a Post-Edwardian Girls’ School Exercise Book, Women’s Studies. 47(8), pp. 765-90.

O’Hagan, L. 2018. Towards a multimodal ethnohistorical approach: a case study of bookplates, Social Semiotics. 19(4), pp. 565-83.