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MUSEUM TEXTS – COMMUNICATION FRAMEWORKS (Ravelli) INTRODUCTION: TEXTS, FRAMEWORKS AND MEANINGS Communicating in museums Communication within a museum encompasses all of an institution’s practices which make meaning. Museum texts as: 1. Texts in museums (labels, catalogue entries, extended texts, wall texts, brochure descriptions…): the language produced by the institution, in written and spoken form, for the consumption of visitors, which contributes to interpretative practices within institution. 2. Museums as texts: the way a whole institution or an exhibition within it makes meaning, communicating to and with its public. Exhibitions are one of the principal ways that a museum or institution communicates with its public and they are constructed of a complex variety of resources, including but not limited to language. In texts in museums the emphasis is on written language, because of its intrinsic contribution to the communication agenda of museums. The overall function of contemporary cultural institution has changed: from their early role as cabinets of curiosity, their responsibility to the public and their definition as ‘public’ institutions are now well entrenched. The overall relation of institution to visitor has changed too: there is a much increased awareness of the diversity of visitors and intense competition for their interest. The approach to knowledge within museums has changed: the emphasis has shifted from curatorially defines exhibitions of the past to thematically focused and interdisciplinary exhibitions. Communication needs to be more explicit and reflexive, more diversified and must be effective, this is actively contributing to and enhance an institution’s aims and objectives, and similarly meet the needs and demands of visitors. Why museum texts? It is the development of the thematic exhibition that has replaces the role of exhibition texts at the forefront. In the past, a curatorially driven agenda, developed with an audience of peers in mind, could successfully function with just minimal labels. A thematic, open, educationally exhibition, aiming to appeal to a wide range of visitors needs to make use of extended texts, which contextualize an object and make explicit the basis for its interpretation. A clear labelling to educate and civilize the mass public. Communication in museums often fall shorts of what might be expected and visitors are frustrated by texts which are overly complex. An approach to communication:

Communication is an active, social process. Meaning is understood in relation to issues of chice ans its complex in nature and always embedded in context. … as an active social process Communication is understood as a social process, arising from the need for social beings to interact with each other and to engage in and with the world. The engagement of museums with communication is a way of enacting their role as social and socializes institutions, creating relations with their visitors, and engaging in the world by finding ways to re-present it. It is the process of communicating itself which makes meanings. They are not a pre-ordinated given, but are actively constructed in and through the use of communicative resources. Communication is also a semiotic process, that is a process of making meaning. A social semiotic view of communication focusses on a communication as a contextualized meaning-making resource. ... where meaning relates to choice Meaning arises whether there are choices in communication. One relevant contrast in meaning is the way in which information is presented to visitors. The choice in presenation ia a choice in meaning, creating meanings for and about the institution, the exhibition and the visitors engaged in the exhibition. … where meaning is complex Meaning (the multifunctional nature of meaning): 1. Representational meaning: the meaning we make in order to engage with, understand and refer to the world. Part of the purpose of communicating is to convey some king of content in this sense. 2. Interactional meaning: one of the main functions of communication is to take up roles, construct relations and convey attitudes. 3. Organizational meaning: the representational and interactional meanings only work if they are organized in an appropriate way. The particular organization of a text enables some meanings to be foregrounded to others and contributes to the coherence and unity of the text. … where meaning relates to context The three frameworks of meanings were proposed by Halliday. A distinguishing feature of Halliday’s social semiotic account is that meaning is seen to relate explicitely to issues of social context. Part of the context includes: 1. The field: the subject matter that is to be communicated. When the field changes representational meaning changes. 2. The tenor: roles and relationships between the interactants in the situation. They give rise to the interactional meaning. 3. The mode: nature of the communication taking place, which give rise to the organizational meaning.

As context influencing text, texts also impact upon contexts: choices made in the process of communication feed back into an understanding of context and help to construct a view of what that context is. A little bit of architecture The communicative framework is derived from Halliday’s systemic-functional linguistics: a social semiotic approach to language which accounts for language and communication as meaningmaking resources within a social context. Language is seen as a resource: a potential for making meaning. Language is not a formula or a list of rules. As a resource it is not relevant to speak of correct or incorrect versions of language. It always occurs in context and so must be evaluated in relation to that context: some language is appropriate in some contexts but not others. The primary object of analysis is text: authentic examples of communication which have some purposeful function in the context and which make some meaning. Texts are made up of units at different levels: 1. At the top of the hierarchy, the text as a whole: we will examine the overall shape and structure and purpose. 2. At the bottom of the hierarchy, words: the smallest building block. 3. In between, clauses, which may occur on their own or with others in a clause complex. 4. Clause are made up of groups, this is clusters around a word. Contextualization The social semiotic approach to communication adopted here contrasts with linear, transmission models of communication, but has some similar concercns to those of social-constructivist approaches and to those which attempt to account for the role of visitors in the communication process. The social semiotic approach contrasts with linear, transmission models of communication, which show messages being passed from sender to receiver. Such models basically capture only the mechanics of communication, the physical factor, but are not able to explain what is going on with communication. The social semiotic approach incorporates a sense of interactivity in its model, whereby interactants are mutually engaged in the communication process. The social semiotic model represents communication as being constitutive rather than reflective. Communication does not reflect or transmit a pre-existing reality, but actively construct and contributes to a sense of that reality. One of the developments in museums research has been the expanded depth and breadth of visitor research, placing visitors at the center. Both text and visitors need to be accounted for in a complex model of communication because it requires two parties to b engaged in the process. A crucial part of understanding visitors is to evaluate their responses and to incorporate these into exhibition processes.

A text is a way of interacting with another party, a way of constructing a particular view of the word for another to engage with, and is in itself a way of enabling communication. There can be differences between producers and receivers. Receivers can take up different reading positions in relation to texts. Reading positions are negotiated in 3 ways: 1. A compliant position accepts the constructed textual reading position. 2. A resistant position is one which rejects the position that is offered 3. A tactical position is one which makes an opportunistic use of the text. ORGANISATION AS A WAY OF MAKING MEANING: USING LANGUAGE TO ORGANISE, SHAPE AND CONNECT A meaning-making system needs to do more than just refer to content. The content must be organized in some way (organizational framework). Any text needs to be organized so that its individual components are able to work together working as one unit. The organizational framework is critical to achieve coherence and it’s more than just a simple glue that holds other elements together. There are different types of organisations and each one creates quite different effects. Macro-level organization: genre and the shape of texts One of the major organizing device is the choice of genre for the text. A genre is a text type and text types are differentiated according to their overall purpose and to the structure which supports that purpose. This frameworks are culturally defined and familiar for members of a particular culture. Recognizing a generic framework in operation enables readers o predict the structure of the text to come and to attend to the patterns of meanings to be made in that text and to attend to the social purpose of that text. All kind of communication fall into a generic pattern because every act of communication serves some kind of social purpose and has an appropriate structure to facilitate that purpose. Genres are interpreted as textual phenomena. Genre is not a fixed concepr. It is a meaning-making resource like any other and so open to innovation and renovation. The key to understand genre is to clearly identify the purpose of the text and to identify the structure. Text types which are frequent in museums: 1. Report: its social purpose is to descrive the way things are. It helps fulfil the function of cataloguing and reporting on knowledge. it is structured with an initial general classification, stating what is being reported upon. The body of the report is a description of the object, article or phenomenon and may be subdivided into thematically coherent sections. They tend to be written in present tense, do not have temporal sequences, focus on process and discuss general groups of things rather than individuals. 2. Explanation: it explains how things happen or why things are as they are and are important in museums in order tocapture events and phenomena. A simple two-part structure: it begin with a general statement to position the reader (something that alerts the reader to the process which is about to be explained) and it is followed by an explanation. They tend to be written in present tense, they are characterized by temporal sequences, and the process tend to focus on concrete doing actions. Participants tend to be generic.

3. Exposition: it has three key parts, beginning with a statement of the argument, and an outline of rhe key points; the body includes each argument in turn, listed and elaborated and organized logically; it concludes with a restatement of the argument. 4. Directive: it attempts to influence people’s actions or behaviours. 5. Discussion: it aims to canvass multiple sides of an argument, and may end with a recommendation or leave the conclusion open. Genres sharing the same or a similar social purpose are likely to share the same organizational and linguistic patterns. There might be variations in structure and language. One way in which variation is incorporated structurally is through the ‘obligatory versus optional’ nature of structural parts. Understanding genre is relevant to reflect the effectiveness of macrolevel organizational patterns in texts and to reflect on some of the implicit assumptions behind the structure of some texts. But another reason for its relevance is that every text must have an explicit purpose. Being able to articulate the purpose and the function of a text enables the producers of an exhibition to compare and evaluate the intention against the outcome. The same principle applies to an exhibition as a whole. The exhibition can be seen as a kind of macro-genre, a super-text which includes a range of elemental genres within it. For visitors recognizing the genre of a text enables them to predict aspects of a text to come. Given the cultural specificity of genres, it is important for a museum attempting to broaden their cultural base and be inclusive of diverse visitors, to consider the genres that might be relevant or irrelevant in different communities. The only possible way is the community consultation. Mid-level organization: pointers and signals Within the overall shape and structure of the test, it will be made up of multiple stages that are incorporated structurally. When a text has multiple stages or multiple points to make, it can be useful to have a guide for the visitor as to what are the relevant points to note. These pointers to mid level organisation can be in two forms: 1. Linguistic: are ways of using language to signal important aspects of text organisation: a. Headings, which summarize key points. Their content alerts visitors to what to expect to find in a text or in a section of a text. b. Topic sentences, which predict the major points of a following section. They function to predict the structure about to come. They may be paragraph-initial. When a text encompass a number of major points, a topic sentence acts like a guide-map for those points. The same organizational principle can be extended to the level of exhibitions, where the introductoriy panel function to signal the organization of the exhibition as a whole . 2. Visual: aspects of layout and design that are used to signal or reinforce other organizational meanings within the text. The use of spacing, typography, and material presentation to enhance the text and make it as readable as possible. A marriage between visual and structural organisation is the use of 3-level texts as a feature of text presentation:

1. The first level, in largest and most prominent font, may be a headline or label. It provides the most basic focus for the exhibit. 2. The second level is an introductory paragraph, in a medium-size font, giving basin information. 3. The third level, in the smaller font, provides more detailed and background information. The success of multi-level text depends on the association of level with functions: however large the font, if the function of the information it represent is inappropriate the text will be unsuccessful. In written text is typical that aspects of design (special highlighting, bold font, change of font or colour) are used to reinforce the linguistic structure of the text, to signal key points and they enables visitors to scan for the most important info. Micro-level organization: the flow of information What is within the text, its substance at the micro-level of clauses, has an equally important contribution to organizational meaning. The organization of clauses and the flow of meanings between them can give a text a particular orientation. Many clauses can be re-ordered and re-organised a little, so that they start and end with different elements. The significance of re-organising a clause is that it changes the orientation or point of departure. Normally one choice or another can appear more natural or appropriate and this feeling depends on the context. In museums this depends on 2 levels of context: 1- the context of the exhibit or of the exhibition, of which the text is a part; 2- the overall context of the text. The organisation of a clause depends on its point of departure. This is called the theme of the clause. It is what comes first in the clause. Choosing an appropriate theme depends on 2 factors: for exhibition, it depends on its focus (In exhibition texts, there should be some symmetry between the theme of the text and the focus of the exhibit. The text functions to support and illuminate the exhibit, so visitors turn to the text expecting to find the focus of the exhibit as the point of departure for the text.) and for text in general, on the sequence of themes in the text as a whole. Choosing an appropriate theme is also dependent on the flow of meanings between clauses in the text as a whole. The theme as departure point for the message is counterbalanced by the point of arrival: the new information which is added by the clause. The new normally appears towards the end of the clause. It is the counterbalance between theme and new that helps determina the flow of information between clauses. For texts to flow smoothly the information which is in the theme position needs to be given, understood, either from the context or from preceding texts. When a reader begins reading a new clause, there should be no surprise. If the info at the beginning of the cluse is new, it will create a point of rupture and lead to a breakdown in its information flow. There are a number of way to ensure that a text have a smooth flow of info. One way is to make sure that the info in the theme position is retrievable: it can repeat a preceding theme or pick up some info that has been presented as new and take it as the next departure point. The constant repetition of theme is appropriate in reports or for short sections of text where one point is the focus for an extended period, but it an become monotonous. Similarly using the new as the next theme there may be a sense that the text never rests.

Reordering info to achieve an appropriate balance between theme and new, you can: 1. Move around some component of the clause, from front to back or vice versa 2. Change the voice of the clause, from active to passive or vice versa 3. Change the choice of verb or noun Integrating verbal and visual information at the micro-level At the micro-level, highlighting is the main resource to signal difference. When the theme is highlighted, it acts as an invitation to visitors to come and explore the topic under question. When the new is highlighted, the new acts a focus of attention. If elements are highlighted at random, this might in fact interfere with process of scanning and accumulating meanings and make the text less accessible. Contemporary layout and design often include random variations of typographical effects. Such layouts are appealing and dynamic but do little for transfer of info. conclusions The organizational framework needs to be considered at 2 levels: 1. At the level of design or conceptualization as an intrinsic part of the meaning-making process. 2. At the level of evaluation, used to reflect on what has or may have been achieved. FOCUS: MAKING TEXTS ACCESSIBLE, ADJUSTING THE LEVEL OF COMPLEXITY Texts can be organized in different ways to achieve different level of accessibility. The purpose of museums is to create texts that are informative and interesting butt also that can be accessed and appreciated by a broad range of visitors. Written and spoken modes of the language Accessibility depends on how complex a text is. To understand complexity is to compare written and spoken language. Written and spoken language are each complex, albeit in different ways. Witten and spoken language are two dimensions of one language; they are referred to as different modes of language. A distinction is needed between the mode and the medium (the channel of communication, the physical way in which the communication takes place). The different modes are distinguished in terms of two dimensions: 1. The amount of contact and feedback between producer and receiver. In a casual conversation there is visual contact and aural contact. Thus maximum feedback is possible and speakers can adjust their conversation according to the feedback they get. A writer has neither visual nor aural contact with the reader, so there is no feedback. In between these extremes, there are a range of other text types with different contact and feedback possibilities (telephone- aural feedback but not visual one, email- no visual or oral contact but immediate feedback thanks to the speed of exchange)

2. The role the language plays in the context of situation, that is the p...