Literally visual : potential ideological orientations of two different vocational arts institutions’ websites : a visual comparative study between Malta and New Mexico

Abstract

This dissertation is a comparative visual critical discourse analysis (VCDA) of potential dominant ideologies that may be present and represented on two vocational educational institutions’ website main pages, their visual arts sub pages and course content pages. These institutions are SFCC in Santa Fe, New Mexico and MCAST in Mosta, Malta. The research aims to compare the way art education on the websites is discursively presented through text as discourse, visuals as discourse, and text and visuals as integrated discourse. It uses a historiographically based, anti-colonial framework as its starting point and specifically examines colonial, neocolonial and neoliberal ideologies as dominant societal constructs. It further questions their potential presence in the discourses of these vocational institutions. The dissertation itself is structured as a mix of text, typographic design, and illustrated visuals throughout to graphically contest, question, and propose different ways of writing, reading, and viewing academic work and to contest the hegemony of commonsense Westernised structures of academic formatting.