Unlocking visual texts : investigating multimodal trends

Abstract

This paper focuses on a number of graffiti, which occurred in numerous female lavatories of a postsecondary school in Malta. Most of these visuals were accompanied by written text, which mainly expounded issues related to sexualities and romantic relationships. These visuals testify to the need of female students to express themselves in environments, which go beyond formal education in classrooms. Through these visual images, students attempted to create spaces where they could give voice to their feelings, doubts, struggles, perplexities and hopes in relation to sexual feelings and encounters. In the absence of sexuality education in the curriculum, the images are understood as having provided a possible form of visual literacy, through which new ways of learning about the sexual and the intimate could have been sought. This type of literacy could have been the result of the students’ effort to resist a desexualized school policy. The analysis of three particular graffiti is employed through a poststructuralist and multimodal approach, in order to draw out possible implications, which this type of literacy could have had on their learning.