Faculty of Humanities
School of Languages
Unit for Academic Literacy
Selected Highlights from Research Findings
This research project focused on the comprehensibility of pictures in educational documents on HIV/AIDS. Structured interviews were held with thirty low-literate and 25 literate adult speakers of African languages.
Their responses were coded and analysed, using SPSS. The low-literate adults were found to experience major problems with the interpretation of visuals containing symbolic-abstract components, particularly speech and thought balloons, and formal symbols (plusses, minuses, crosses and ticks). Literate respondents' interpretation of pictures with symbolic-abstract components was slightly better than that of low-literates, yet they also performed poorly on labelling the symbols (only 12% better than the low-literates).
Metaphorical pictures proved to be problematic for both literates and low-literates. Surprisingly, though, only 16% of the literates, as opposed to 30% of the low-literates, recognised a particular metaphor as a portrayal of HIV/AIDS.
The low-literates tended to interpret metaphorical symbols literally, and culturally encoded meanings seemed to override mass media interpretations. It is recommended that designers of health education materials distributed at public health facilities in South Africa design these documents at a 5th grade level, and include colourful, culturally relevant pictures.
Pictorial metaphors, art styles that distort objects, complex pictures with a partially symbolic content, as well as abstract symbols borrowed from the written language should be avoided where possible.
Prof A Carstens
Unit for Language Skills Development
+27 (0) 12 420 2660
adelia.carstens@up.ac.za
|
