Link to Multimodal Mode-Bending: https://spark.adobe.com/video/mEHnPiGjs2Soj
Reflect on the potential benefits and challenges of engaging in mode-changing and describe your own redesign process.
I chose to use multimodal for this model bending assignment. Particularly, I combined audio (music, the rhythm and intonation of my speech), still and moving pictures (videos of myself, visual symbols), and written modal through use of different spoken and written language (English and Cantonese), and speech grammar for more accessibility to information being said (New London Group, 1996). This way of mode bending, from fully textual to bilingual, demonstrates how literacy is not only the ability to read and write, but also the ability to understand the information being presented, also known as information literacy (Dobson & Willinsky, 2009). The upbeat music in the background supports the meaning of the message depending on the past experiences of the listener (New London Group, 1996), signifying that the message is positive. Also, if a reader/listener/watcher’s identity or experience was similar to mine (Chinese, English linguistic ability), this combination of modes and the ideas would be more beneficial as it allows for them to better conceptualize and make meaning (New London Group, 1996) of my outward and inward identity. Multimodal also allows for accessibility. Value for some cultures may not only be placed on written language but on listen or visual information (Dobson &Willinsky, 2009). Thus, redesigning my mode was to not only re-negotiate my identity (New London Group, 1996), but to also re-negotiate the place-ness of my identity. Language is also seen to be a social process (Dobson & Willinsky, 2009), so the use of a video to introduce myself or talk about text technology and its importance was beneficial to make the mode-bending assignment come off my sociable. The use of informal, interpersonal speech rather than formal, monological writing/speech was also to make the information more accessible and social, steering away from an authorship perspective in text (Dobson & Willinsky, 2009).
As I may have preferred to demonstrate my identity by completing this assignment in Chinese, what I found challenging was finding replacement words for the technological jargon or academic words from English to Chinese. This could also demonstrate how language shapes the way I think (Boroditsky, 2011), as I am shaped by my English language. This technological terminology that I couldn’t find the words in Chinese to translate, reminds me of New London Group’s (1996) observation that language was linked to authorship or a sense of privilege. The engagement of mode bending gave me a sense of failure in negotiating my identity into my text (New London Group, 1996). Although New London Group (1996) noted that writing was seen as authorship, a sense of authority or privilege, I also found that mixing modalities could also be seen as authorship and privilege. That is because to use different modes, access and knowledge to technology is beneficial. To become knowledgeable in technology, one must be educated or have access to tech, which in society today, access is not equitable.
References:
Boroditsky, L. (2011). How language shapes thought. Scientific American, 304(2), 62-65.
Dobson, T. & Willinsky, J. (2009). Digital literacy. Retrieved from https://pkp.sfu.ca/files/Digital%20Literacy.pdf
The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. (Links to an external site.) Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.