Multimodal Evaluative Positioning in Academic Posters of Biology Students: Considerations for Science Literacy consideraciones para una literacidad en ciencias

Abstract

This paper explores multimodal value discursive positions, which integrates
verbal mode and image in ensembles, in a corpus conformed by 8 academic posters
of the course Cell Biology of a Chilean state university, made by first-year university
students between 2016 and 2019. From each cohort, the two posters that obtained
the highest score were selected. The objective is to identify, through the conceptual
framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics and Social Semiotics, how interpersonal
multimodal meanings are encoded in the corpus. The analysis provided evidence for
the characterization of this academic genre from the perspective of the text’s verbal
evaluative positions that are assembled with the visual resources to configure the
semantic space. The results of the study show judgments evoked to elided agents that
account for valuation, as a discursive strategy of students in the face of controversial
topics in sciences, such as the use of stem cells and animal experimentation. The
findings also show the need to include a multimodal approach in pedagogy processes
considering the literacy of sciences in academic posters, since verbal meanings are
assembled with visual meanings to mark evaluative positions. Finally, suggestions
are proposed for the students to acquire appropriate evaluative strategies to approach
scientific academic discourse.