Multimodal Approach in Advacing the Visual Literacy

: This research aims to introduce multimodality as an analytic tool to analyze visual texts which are rich in semiotic modes, especially those that juxtapose more than one pictorial forms elaborated with verbal text, such as in a graphic novel. Graphic novel is chosen as the object of the study because it elaborates drawings, photographs, other forms of pictures, and verbal texts. This research chose several graphic novels to highlight that such form of literature is not ‘cheap’ or childish, yet it could promote visual literacy which might have not been considered as ‘academic’ all along. Literary studies were conducted in compiling some samples and collecting qualitative data. Samples were purposively selected and narrowed down to five samples to help finding out the significance of learning multimodality. The semiotic modes discussed include the visual, verbal, written text, gesture, and even color. While the meta-functions posited to help analyzing a whole text cover three domains, namely ideational, interpersonal, and textual. The findings will bring the audience to recognize that using multimodal approach is suitable to understand a visual text thoroughly and hopefully it will also escalate the use of various visuals as a way of effective communication in enhancing the visual literacy.