Analogy and multi-modal exploration in the teaching of language theory - includes table: Features Distinguishing Description from Depiction

Style, Spring, 2003 by Lesley Jeffries

1. Introduction

This article reports on an experiment in teaching at Huddersfield University (UK) during the academic year 2001-2002. The teaching took place in the context of the first year of a single honors English Language degree program and took as its basic premise the idea that some kinds of learning of theory would be aided by the use of analogy explored by multimodal means rather than the purely textual or discoursal.

Goswami points out that reasoning by analogy is fundamental to human cognition and adds, "It is involved in classification and in learning, it provides a tool for thought and explanation, and it is important for scientific discovery and creative thinking" (1). This assertion will not be news to teachers of stylistics or any other linguistics courses for that matter. We use analogies not just as part of the daily business of living (as pointed out by Lakoff and Johnson) but also as a regular and frequent aspect of teaching, particularly when we are teaching what might be considered difficult topics. However, the analogies and metaphors we use to teach abstract and theoretical ideas are often textual, using a linguistic means to indicate the likeness between the domains that are being compared. Indeed, there is some evidence that teachers use analogy without much in the way of explanation of its basis. This can give rise to problems of understanding, as Goswami points out in relation to the teaching of mathemat ics:

Teachers often assume that giving the children the right analogy will be sufficient for learning. Transfer from the analogical base to the target mathematical concept is expected to be automatic. [...] However, to the children, the analogies may not be obvious at all.

(119-20)

There may be some need, therefore, for students to "make the analogies their own" by means of material experience rather than abstract reasoning in accordance with Kress and van Leeuwen's observation that "[t]he abstractness of the category of discourse, as much as the abstractness of its discussion in academic contexts, is prone to make us forget that experience is not abstract, ever" (28). Kress and van Leeuwen also point out that although the relationship between a mode and meaning in semiosis is conventional, it is nevertheless true that "the materiality of modes interacts with the materiality of specific senses" (28) and to that extent, to change the mode of delivery of meaning is to change the material experience, and thus also the learning experience.

This article combines the insights of research into analogical thinking and into multimodal cognition to suggest that analogical experimentation using exploratory methods with non-linguistic modes of representation may be able to help students in understanding and learning complex theoretical concepts.

2. Modes of Representation

There are many ways in which we could categorize the different modes we can use to represent concepts and things in the world. One way would be to distinguish modes according to the sense(s) that they are accessed by (visual, oral, etc.). However, as far as cognition is concerned, one important distinction can be drawn between modes whose signs are in some sense "motivated" (i.e., have some intrinsic connection with their referent) and those which are simply abstract, as is the major part of human natural language.

Schnotz makes a distinction between sign systems that are descriptive and those that are depictive. These correspond, roughly, to the difference between a textual description of something and a picture of it. He draws our attention to a number of features of these two types of representation, which I have gathered into tabular form for the sake of conciseness, and comparison:

It should be evident from this table that the two forms of representation have different strengths and weaknesses, depending on the role that the representations are to play. For example, there may be times when the completeness of a depiction is partly redundant because the required meaning relies on certain features only of the object in question. Similarly, there may sometimes be pedagogical advantages to a description because increasing computational effort by a student will be rewarded by better understanding and retention. Indeed, Schnotz himself points these advantages out in connection with the different computational requirements and resulting efficacy of multimedia teaching tools. He refers to experimental evidence that learners presented with the same pictorial visual aids, some static and some animated, showed a differential capacity for understanding and remembering:

[...] learners who received only static pictures during learning had to perform the respective mental simulations by themselves. This might have been harder for them, but turned out to be an advantage later, when they had to perform these processes on their own. Animated pictures can obviously hinder knowledge acquisition, because they sometimes reduce the demands on the learner's cognitive processing in an unwelcome way.