The Use of Graphic Novels for Developing Multiliteracies

그래픽노블을 통한 다중문식성의 발달

The modes of narratives and communication have expanded due to social and cultural changes and technological development. Thus texts have become multimodal and media hybridities and media crossover have been increasing as well. Multimodality requires new literacy to understand and interpret those multimodal texts other than existing traditional literacy approaches. The New London Group (2000) argues that multiliteracies are needed to serve today's changing multimodal texts. Kress (2003) also argues, visual texts have been prevailing, being mingled with other modes of texts such as linguistic, audio, gestural, and spatial modes. Literary texts are not exception in this trend of multimodality. The recent renaissance of comics, in particular, the new light on graphic novels can be interpreted in this historical vein. In comparison to comics, no consensus has been made in defining graphic novels, however, many studies have been recently conducted in order to look into the potential of graphic novels in building multiliteracies. In this paper, the graphic novel as a literary genre are explored from a histocial perspective and the definition of graphic novels was attempted to be made. In the light of multiliteracies, this paper presented cases that show how graphic novels can be utilized to build multiliteracies. Lastly, the use of graphic novels for English as a foreign language was introduced as well. The author hopes that at the age of multimodality, the potential graphic novels have in language and literacy education can be taken into account by language teachers and students in expanding their territory of literacy.