Journal of Language and Literacy Education Vol. 15 Issue 1—Spring 2019 Issues of Validity, Subjectivity, and Reflexivity in Multimodal Literacy Research and Analysis David E. Low & Jessica Zacher Pandya Abstract: In this article we highlight analyses conducted in two qualitative literacy studies to discuss various implications of a blended, or hybrid, approach to multimodal analysis. By investigating several prominent frameworks commonly used together for the purpose of analyzing multimodal data, and describing our own experiences blending these frameworks, we determine& that a hybrid approach is not necessarily ineffective at producing data interpretations, but that it is insufficiently reflexive of the role researcher positionality plays in multimodal analysis. We conclude the article by offering recommendations for supplementing hybrid analytical approaches through data co-construction and increased attention to researcher positionality. Keywords: multimodality, multimodal literacies, visual analysis, data co-construction David E. Low is Assistant Professor of Literacy Education at California State University, Fresno. A former high school ELA teacher in Tucson, Arizona, David conducts research on how young people’s multimodal reading and composing practices – particularly through the medium of comics – facilitate various enactments of critical literacy. Contact him at [email protected]. Jessica Zacher Pandya is Chair of the Liberal Studies Department and Professor in the Departments of Teacher Education and Liberal Studies at California State University, Long Beach. A former San Francisco kindergarten teacher, Jessica conducts research on children's identity work in diverse urban classrooms, and more recently, ways that English learners make meaning in multiple modes as they create digital videos. Contact her at: [email protected]. 1 Journal of Language and Literacy Education Vol. 15 Issue 1—Spring 2019 Introduction1 multimodality researchers attempt to make validity claims in problematic ways. We question why, as “It’s not about methodological promiscuity. It’s qualitative researchers who engage in highly about methodological promise and acuity.” interpretive work, we turn to empiricist and –Leslie Burns, 2015 formalist logics for analyzing the multimodal subsets of our data. What is it about multimodal iteracy researchers are not by necessity artifacts that drives literacy researchers to employ trained semioticians, art or film theorists, or analytic approaches that imply, if not certainty, then Dan Brown-styled professors of symbology, at least the attenuation of subjectivity? In the next L and yet we nevertheless collect and analyze sections we attempt to answer these questions by an array of multimodal materials from our research highlighting lessons learned from our own sites. As Hammersley and Atkinson (2007) note, experiences analyzing multimodal data. Ultimately, ethnographic field studies entail “gathering we examine how researchers might achieve greater whatever data are available to throw light on the “promise and acuity” when making meaning of issues that are the emerging focus of inquiry” (p. 3). multimodal artifacts. In many field sites and especially those examining literacies in educational contexts, these data include Blended Multimodal Analysis multimodal artifacts. Such artifacts weave together multiple sign systems, such as writing, images, Offering guidance on how to interpret multimodal gestures, spoken language, and sound effects to artifacts, some scholars recommend a blended, or communicate ideas. Examples of multimodal hybrid, approach to analysis. Siegel and Panofsky artifacts include drawings, paintings, and other (2009) write that “there is no ready-made toolkit for visual markings (on any number of surfaces, with analyzing multimodality in literacy studies, but any number of implements), photographs, films, researchers have turned to a range of theories in digital stories, and objects, any of which may be search of analytic guidance” that can be streaked with the “sedimented identities, or traces of “productively blended” (p. 101). Rogers (2011) marks a past experiences” of their creators (Rowsell & Pahl, similarly hybrid approach to analyzing discourse, 2007, p. 388). where researchers layer theories and analytics from across disciplinary traditions to yield new data At some point, a researcher assigns meaning to the interpretations. Our review of dozens of literacy data they have collected, even when an artifact’s studies that analyze multimodal artifacts finds their meaning is unspecified, ambiguous, or symbolic. As analyses based on a blend of sociocultural theories we have experienced, multimodal analysis can be a (drawing on Vygotsky and Bakhtin); techniques daunting mixture of deduction and invention. In derived from Hallidayan functional grammar and this paper we ask readers to think alongside us social semiotics (e.g., Baldry & Thibault, 2006; through various implications of multimodal analysis Bezemer & Kress, 2008; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006; as commonly undertaken by literacy researchers. O’Halloran, 2004); techniques derived from triadic Many of our arguments center around how approaches to semiotic analysis (e.g., Dressman, 1 We acknowledge that there is a gender spectrum and plural form) to recognize the fluid nature of identity, that myriad pronouns exist that can be used to refer to unless referring specifically to authors and participants individuals. Throughout this article we use the gender- who identify as female or male, in which cases we use neutral pronouns they/them/theirs (in both singular and she/her/hers or he/him/his. 2 Journal of Language and Literacy Education Vol. 15 Issue 1—Spring 2019 2016; Hull & Nelson, 2005); visual, pictorial, and suppress one’s intuitions is problematic. There is semiotic grammars (e.g., Bang, 2000; Serafini, 2015; simply no way to take the researcher out of the Sonesson, 2016; Towndrow, Nelson & Yusuf, 2013); research, nor should it be an ideal for which to and terminologies imported from film analysis, strive. comics analysis, picturebook analysis, and other art theories (e.g., Anderson, 1995; Bateman & Schmidt, The goal of this article is to explore the thinking 2012; Connors, 2012; de Roock, Bhatt, & Adams, 2016; behind, and consequences of, layering theories and Ghiso & Low, 2013; Pandya, Pagdilao, Kim, & methods in multimodal analysis. We begin by Marquez, 2015). There is also often a cultural linking blended, or hybrid, analytical approaches to element to blended multimodal analysis, in which validity claims that typically inform models of the unit of analysis is not the artifact itself but the inquiry more formalist than many literacy cultural mediation around it. researchers claim to espouse. We then survey literature on multimodal composing in schools, The prospect of drawing meaning from multimodal including its relationship to anti-deficit counter- artifacts can provoke trepidation in a researcher storying and the limited impact it has had in interested in “getting it right” (Richardson, 1997, p. affecting policy. As illustrative examples, we share 91); however, the concept of detailed accounts of multimodal accuracy or rightness in “There is simply no way to data analysis from our own multimodal data interpretation studies of primarily Latinx remains largely unresolved. take the researcher out of student populations; we follow Some literacy researchers elect the research, nor should it each account with a section to follow the advice of be an ideal for which to problematizing our analysis. We methodologists such as Saldaña conclude by offering four ideas strive.” (2013), who encourages for augmenting a blended researchers to “trust [their] approach to multimodal data intuitive, holistic impressions” when analyzing analysis in an effort to highlight the promise of multimodal artifacts and confesses he has “yet to multimodal literacy research. find a single satisfactory approach that rivals the tacit and visceral capabilities of human reflection The Problem with Blended Multimodal Analysis and interpretation” (p. 57). Harste (2014) also argues in favor of researchers relying on intuition to arrive In the interest of claiming credibility, or perhaps at analytic insights, a type of reasoning he describes confidence in the truth of our findings (Lincoln & as “abductive” (p. 98). To those researchers who Guba, 1985), we as researchers have at times layered desire a more systematic method of data an assortment of multimodal analytics, in spite of interpretation, layering analytics can offer a our knowledge that a findings-as-truth perspective semblance of procedural fidelity—that one has works to minimize a researcher’s “intuitive, holistic properly followed approved procedures. By bringing impressions” (Saldaña, 2013, p. 57). Blended together an assortment of theories and methods, approaches to multimodal analysis flow from a researchers may feel they can more credibly claim to similar wellspring as data triangulation, and are have arrived at the accurate meaning of a likewise intended to “reduce the risk of chance multimodal artifact and move onto discussing its associations and of systematic biases due to [using] a implications. While well intentioned, the impulse to specific method” (Maxwell, 2005, p. 112). While this 3 Journal of Language and Literacy Education Vol. 15 Issue 1—Spring 2019 corroborative approach may sound advantageous, it about multimodal data, and why does interpreting it presupposes that triangulation