Acquisition of artistic literacy in multimodal learning via intersemiotic translation

The topic of teaching competence in artistic perception in school curricula has been investigated in the fields of education (Kindelan 2012), psychology (Vygotsky 1991), and semiotics (Ojamaa et al. 2019). Previous scholarship emphasizes the need to offer learners the opportunity to develop meaning-making abilities concerning different types of artistic texts. They also emphasized the educational value of establishing communication with and by means of such texts. This paper argues the educational value of acquiring artistic literacy in school education in the context of digital culture. We consider this acquisition process as the development of meaning-making abilities in relation to artistic texts and fostering learners’ ability to use artistic literacy as a symbolic psychological tool (Vygotsky 1978). We address this question by accentuating the role of semiotic mediation of artistic literacy. At the same time, we argue that artistic literacy acquisition can be established through intersemiotic translation among various multimodal artistic texts. In a practical sense, the paper attempts to develop a methodological framework for acquiring artistic literacy, conceptualized in terms of contemporary educational skills and competences. This paper also analyses the process of acquiring artistic literacy in relation to mediation in learning, the representation of texts, artistic work, and educational assessment. The analysis keeps account of the Tartu-Moscow Semiotic school framework and Lev Vygotsky’s theoretical framework, especially in addressing artistic work in education (Vygotsky 1971, 1978, 1991).