Images are coloured words in a multi-coloured world Adriana Galvani University of Bologna adriana.galvani@unibo.it Abstract All disciplines use images, but more than others, geography does. Some aspects of geography need more icons, in fact teaching tourism offers many opportunities for using images. Images should be not only presented but analysed and discussed, because normally they disclose and hide messages and meanings. Students know images since childhood at home through television, but usually parents don’t teach how to interpret them, because they didn’t learn that either. Teachers need to know how to deal with images. For being able to teach, they should know semiotic and cinema techniques; they could be considered competent when they are able to produce movies by themselves and when students are also proficient in practising these techniques; in other words to be able to speak with words and without words, especially in a multicultural world where words constitute a barrier for intercultural communication. A case study is presented here. Teaching tourism at the University of Bologna Forward Throughout my career I have thought that movies were not useful tools for teaching. However media has become more remarkable every day, particularly if we sustain the idea of a “pansemiotic” culture (Knoblauch, 2001: 4). In fact as stated by Gozzi, “as the number of radios and televisions increase in a given high-context culture, people will pay less attention to each other and more attention to the media (1992: 60). Media are of a ubiquitous nature in our lives, especially in cross-cultural studies, so it seems necessary to examine their role in the “communicative paradigm” (Knoblauch, ibid) which our brain and our lives are inserted in, while culture can be considered as the construction of contexts by means of communicative actions. We must use media in teaching several types of languages, because we know there are various types of communication. I n fact even silence is a form of communication, so that it could have a meaning: “like a zero in mathematics, it is an absence with a function” (Braithwaite, 1990: 321). Media communication should be mediated by parents from childhood, but these too are artless respect to the requirements of the emergent technology, and surely they never have had any form of acculturation in this direction. As a consequence, the role of school results is enhanced, since adapting to socio-cultural changes requires knowledge - acquiring that knowledge requires communication (Smith, 1992: 214). Personal experiences I have learned, during an Erasmus visit, that movies are much utilized in the UK, due to the number of immigrants with many difficulties in speaking English or with a low level of understanding or knowledge. Inter-acculturation is in fact not easy. “It goes without saying that every border crossing involves some need for adjustment and acculturation. Just as visitors often find the need to adopt the manners and customs of their host country, so do texts (and things – we add) (Cohen and Roeh, 1992: 23). It is sure that there is a growing trend among scholars to focus on and to study the “universal” nature of media contents and the “globalization”, because the media markets try to sell products in enlarged markets, creating the lines of a desired “post-Babel” hypothesis (Cohen and Roeh, cit.: 32) or a simple “shared biosphere” (Smith, 1992: 223). In the two last decades the same is also true of Italy, as it became a country of immigration and now we have the same issues that English schools have had. Movies are useful in teaching geography, because they illustrate the geography of our real world. It is important to pay attention even regarding films narrating the past history, because eventually they are too much elaborated or “modernized”. It is easier to teach geography through images, but it is necessary to understand and to let ...
Images are coloured words in a multi-coloured world
GALVANI, ADRIANA
2009
Abstract
Images are coloured words in a multi-coloured world Adriana Galvani University of Bologna adriana.galvani@unibo.it Abstract All disciplines use images, but more than others, geography does. Some aspects of geography need more icons, in fact teaching tourism offers many opportunities for using images. Images should be not only presented but analysed and discussed, because normally they disclose and hide messages and meanings. Students know images since childhood at home through television, but usually parents don’t teach how to interpret them, because they didn’t learn that either. Teachers need to know how to deal with images. For being able to teach, they should know semiotic and cinema techniques; they could be considered competent when they are able to produce movies by themselves and when students are also proficient in practising these techniques; in other words to be able to speak with words and without words, especially in a multicultural world where words constitute a barrier for intercultural communication. A case study is presented here. Teaching tourism at the University of Bologna Forward Throughout my career I have thought that movies were not useful tools for teaching. However media has become more remarkable every day, particularly if we sustain the idea of a “pansemiotic” culture (Knoblauch, 2001: 4). In fact as stated by Gozzi, “as the number of radios and televisions increase in a given high-context culture, people will pay less attention to each other and more attention to the media (1992: 60). Media are of a ubiquitous nature in our lives, especially in cross-cultural studies, so it seems necessary to examine their role in the “communicative paradigm” (Knoblauch, ibid) which our brain and our lives are inserted in, while culture can be considered as the construction of contexts by means of communicative actions. We must use media in teaching several types of languages, because we know there are various types of communication. I n fact even silence is a form of communication, so that it could have a meaning: “like a zero in mathematics, it is an absence with a function” (Braithwaite, 1990: 321). Media communication should be mediated by parents from childhood, but these too are artless respect to the requirements of the emergent technology, and surely they never have had any form of acculturation in this direction. As a consequence, the role of school results is enhanced, since adapting to socio-cultural changes requires knowledge - acquiring that knowledge requires communication (Smith, 1992: 214). Personal experiences I have learned, during an Erasmus visit, that movies are much utilized in the UK, due to the number of immigrants with many difficulties in speaking English or with a low level of understanding or knowledge. Inter-acculturation is in fact not easy. “It goes without saying that every border crossing involves some need for adjustment and acculturation. Just as visitors often find the need to adopt the manners and customs of their host country, so do texts (and things – we add) (Cohen and Roeh, 1992: 23). It is sure that there is a growing trend among scholars to focus on and to study the “universal” nature of media contents and the “globalization”, because the media markets try to sell products in enlarged markets, creating the lines of a desired “post-Babel” hypothesis (Cohen and Roeh, cit.: 32) or a simple “shared biosphere” (Smith, 1992: 223). In the two last decades the same is also true of Italy, as it became a country of immigration and now we have the same issues that English schools have had. Movies are useful in teaching geography, because they illustrate the geography of our real world. It is important to pay attention even regarding films narrating the past history, because eventually they are too much elaborated or “modernized”. It is easier to teach geography through images, but it is necessary to understand and to let ...I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
