Schrift - Bild - Ton (E-Book). Mirjam Weder

for different bars for ease of comparison or making the spaces between the bars narrower or wider, including horizontal lines to facilitate ease of reading. The range of options for representation of information is endless and can be creative depending on the communicative purpose and audience (see Abbildung 2).

      Abbildung 2: Authorial engagement in infographics

      The representational choices made in Abbildung 2 may not be appropriate in certain academic disciplines, and may, in fact, weaken academic voice, whereas they function well in popular journalistic genres. However, in creating information graphics, we need to be aware of the full range of representational resources in order to make appropriate selections for the particular domain in which we are operating, both in terms of content and voice. Understanding the relation between agency and constraints is crucial for exploring how we construct authorial voice here. As Thesen describes it, «voice, like language, is never neutral; it is always in tension between pulls towards convention (centripetal forces) and pushes away from the centre towards more hybrid, experimental and open forms» (Thesen 2014, 6). I have shown that authorial engagement in information graphics is largely realized through the choice of type of graphic and the composition of the graphic.

      I want to move on to think about something a little different, to see how the notion of authorial engagement manifests in three-dimensional texts. In certain courses and subjects, students need to produce three-dimensional texts for assessment. Although these texts do not necessarily involve writing, they are academic texts produced for assessment. Examples of such text include architectural models, jewellery designs, art, engineering models. I have argued that authorial engagement is made manifest in designed artefacts through material choices around the surface of the artefact, the substance of the artefact, and through the traces of the tools of production (Archer 2018). In terms of the surface of the artefact, colour contributes to meaning-making through associations or symbolic meanings and through combinations of colours, hues, degrees of contrast, degrees of saturation and purity. Surface texture is another aspect to consider, for instance, metals, natural materials and synthetics could have high shine, be polished or unpolished, be hammered, embossed, rough or smooth, shiny or matt. Finally, light and shadow are of interest in terms of surface choices. Light reflects off surfaces and is influenced by the surface texture and material. In Abbildung 3, the surface texture of the earrings is smooth and polished. Transparency and opacity are employed as semiotic resources, as is light and surface reflection.

      Abbildung 3: Authorial engagement manifest in the surface of the artefact

      Choices around the substance of the artefact also realize voice and include the stuff or material out of which the artefact is made, such as iron, wire, paper. The physical materials could be raw or processed, natural (such as wood, bone, stone, shell) or synthetic (such as plastic or rubber), durable or non-durable, upcycled (as in Abbildung 4). Finally, the tools and the traces of the tools used in the production of an artefact also realize voice. The traces can include pen inscriptions rather than printed ink or erased pencil marks, scraping or marks from hammering or chiselling, as seen in the flattened bottle top earrings in Abbildung 4.

      The advantage of looking at the three-dimensional texts above in the way that I have is to show that voice manifests in a number of different kinds of texts that students need to produce, and to work with the concept of voice and see how it manifests differently across different modes, media and genres. I have argued that authorial engagement is expressed through choice; the type of representation chosen and the compositional choices made. I have suggested ways in which these choices manifest differently across modes. Now, I will move on to discuss the ways in which academic voice is realized through citation.

      Abbildung 4: Earrings upcycled from cooldrink bottle tops

      Citation in different modes

      Citation is a resource used in the design of meanings in socially shaped and regular ways and is central to academic voice. Citation across modes involves appropriating a source into your argument and using the voices of others to negotiate your position in a particular discourse community. The rhetorical function of citation is thus to enter the academic conversation. The term citation works better across modes than a term like quoting or paraphrasing or even referencing. It is thus useful for talking about multimodal texts.

      We are very familiar with the conventions around citation in writing and how this impacts on voice. For instance, the choice of where to place a reference in academic writing has implications for authorial voice. A reference placed at the beginning of a sentence, as in Bakhtin (1981) indicates that … is different to a reference in brackets following a statement, as in: (Bakhtin, 1981). Citation in images is, however, less known to us, or, at least, less theorized. Citation in images can mostly be thought of as paraphrasing, for instance, drawing a cartoon from a painting or a flow chart from a diagram, or an abstract drawing of a building. However, these terms taken from writing do not work well when looking at citation in images. We need more precise semiotic terms to describe these processes. Gunther Kress has proposed more generic terms to talk about semiotic processes, namely transformation and transduction. Transformation refers to the processes of meaning change through the re-ordering of the elements in a text, but working within the same mode, such as writing (Kress 2010, 129). Transduction names the «process of moving meaning-material from one mode to another – from speech to image; from writing to film» (Kress 2010, 129). So, if you describe an image in writing, it is not so much paraphrasing as transducting from one mode to another.

      Citation in three dimensional artefacts functions slightly differently to both writing and images. In Archer (2018), I propose that citation in three dimensional artefacts comprises intertextual negotiation with authoritative conventions, such as big names, art periods, and specific genres. Citation can also be thought of as connotative provenance. Of course, the notions of intertextuality and provenance apply to all texts, including writing, but I am using them now specifically to think about voice in designed artefacts. Provenance refers to the fact that we «constantly import signs from other contexts (another era, social group, culture) into the context in which we are now making a new sign, in order to signify ideas and values which are associated with that other context» (Kress & Van Leeuwen 2001, 10). Björkvall (2018) points to how provenance is concerned with connotational meanings that require specific cultural knowledge in order to be recognized, even as these meanings may change over time. To illustrate this idea of provenance, I take an example from my university campus (see Abbildung 5).

      Abbildung 5: Citation as provenance: Decolonial Struggles

      This is an image of the department of architecture building taken two years ago during the student protests, which I mentioned earlier. Pieces of paper are stuck on the windows, spelling the words Decolonial Struggles. Here the relationship between writing and place is important and the temporary nature of the message is evident by the fact that some of the papers had already peeled off the windows. What is interesting was that a week or two later the same font and aesthetic (and some of the wording) was then taken into a poster for advertising a particular event, called unsettling colonialism. I would argue that this is an example of citation as provenance. The poster draws on the aesthetics, values and discourses of the protest action by replicating a version of the typography as seen on the building. Interestingly, this is very local and in-house citation, as you needed to have been there and seen the transient slogans at a particular time and place. This example highlights sharply that citation is about creating communities, with both insiders and outsiders to those communities.

      See Abbildung 6 below for another example of citation as provenance. They are bangles produced from plastic water bottles. When people do upcycling they draw on different discourses