Studying the Relationship between Text and Picture of Arabic textbooks in the in Junior High School (Based on the Theory of Maria Nikolajeva and Carole Scott)

Document Type : مقالات علمی پژوهشی

Authors
F. Irandost 1
A. Bashiri 2
1 PhD Candidate in Arabic language and literature, Kashan University, Kashan, Iran
2 Assistant Professor of Arabic Language and Literature, Kashan University, Kashan, Iran
10.29252/LRR.13.4.7
Abstract
The increasing knowledge and the changes in the lifestyle of today’s complicated world have made the optimal efficiency of the educational system to rely on understanding the basic principles of learning and proper design of textbooks. As the first educational language of human is pictorial and the importance of pictures in transferring the concepts is emphasized, this study investigates the relationship between text and picture of Arabic textbooks in the junior high school based on the theory of Maria Nikolajeva and Carole Scott by explaining the status of books from this perspective is the main issue of the present study. The research method is descriptive and of the content analysis type. The population and sample match and are all of the content of this grade’s Arabic book (text and pictures of this section) in 1399-1400(2021-2022). A review based on Nikolajeva and Carol Scott theory about different relations between text and pictures (symmetry, completion, expanding/incremental, confrontational, multi-narrative)is used as an analysis tool; and descriptive statistics (frequency and frequency percentage)and inferential statistics(Chi-square test) are used for data analysis.The study shows that there are the symmetry, completion, expanding/incremental relations in the Arabic books and the symmetry relation has the highest frequency. So different dynamic relationships between text and pictures are not considered in the content of mentioned text book and these new books need to be revised in the field of text-image relationship.



1. Introduction

The increasing knowledge and the changes in the lifestyle of today’s complicated world have made the optimal efficiency of the educational system to rely on understanding the basic principles of learning and proper design of textbooks. As the first educational language of human is pictorial and the importance of pictures in transferring the concepts is emphasized, this study investigates the relationship between text and picture of Arabic textbooks in the in junior high school based on the theory of Maria Nikolajeva and Carole Scott.



2. Theoretical foundations

Nikolajeva and Carol Scott are among those who paid attention to the dynamism of the relationship between the text and the picture. They believed that in pictorial books, there is a relationship between two separate sets of photo symbols (pictures) and conventional symbols (words) and the tension between these two functions leads to endless probabilities of their interaction. During their studies, they differentiate among different types of books and represent them on the continuum, based on their texts and pictures as well as their relationship.





Pictorial books without pictures
Text and picture together
Books without pictures





In the group of books which are in the middle of the continuum, the relationship between text and picture is divided to five types which are:

Table 1.

Different types of relationship between text and picture based on Maria Nikolajeva and Carol Scott’s Theory




Type of the relationship
Explanation


Pictorial-symmetrical 1
In this structure, the words narrate the story which can be seen in the picture; although the words cannot explain all the details of the picture.



Pictorial- complementary 2
If an issue is not stated in the text or the text cannot explain it, it completes its picture and vice versa. This relationship is established when the gaps between text and picture are small.



Pictorial- expanding/increasing 3
This kind of picture includes all of the concepts of the text and additionally, it expresses a more expanded story with the same theme expands it.



Pictorial- contrastive 4
Narrating text is different from that of the picture. In this structure, the audience can be challenged using a lot of methods so that the audience can take part in story creation using different interpretations. Making contrast in audience by presenting two levels of hidden complex and simple meaning, contrast in style, contrast in type and quality, contrast in characterization, contrast in place and time, contrast in attitude which certainly is not limited to point of view and can include ideology too, contrast in ultra-historical nature through which the concepts can be explained that cannot be explained through pictures; the concepts such as quadrilateral circle.





Pictorial- multi-narrative/ adjacent 5
In this type, two or more dissimilar narrations, are next to each other. According to Nikolajeva and Scott, contrast in being next to each other exists in this type.






(Nikolajeva and Scott, 2000: 1-28; Nikolajeva and Scott, 2006: 225-238; Hesampour et, al. 1393: 29)

In their research and studies, Nikolajeva and Scott studied the presented hypothetical continuum comprehensively and regarded different types of books (pictorial without text, text together with picture, without picture) as well as different relationships between text and picture and on the other hand, their studies are among the latest studies in this field; therefor, the present research is based on the components and the definitions of these two theorists.



3. Methodology

The methodology used in this study is content analysis method which is regarded as one of the scientific research methodologies as well as the subset of descriptive methodology (Dehlan, 2015: 396).



4. Linguistic corpus and research content unit

The three-volume collection of junior high school Arabic text book (the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades) in the academic year of 1399-1400 is the studied linguistic corpus. The objective of the present research is to investigate the relationship between the text and the picture, so the texts and their related pictures are investigated in the mentioned books. Since two units of record and context attract the researchers’ attention, the text of each lesson as well as its considered picture is regarded as the “record” unit and the junior high school Arabic text books as the “context” unit. In the present research, the sample size equals the statistical population size.



5. Research data collection method and instruments

The instrument of this research is a content analysis form based on the presented components and definitions by Miria Nikolajeva and Carol Scott. During investigation of each lesson of the text book, the researchers noticed that the pictures haven’t been numbered; so first of all they numbered the pictures for reference facility. The text and the picture of some lessons were on two separate pages, it means that the text was on a page and its related picture was on the opposite page; so according to Nikolajeva and Scott’s functional expressions, they have been called “double range” and the samples in which the text and the picture were in the same page were called “single range” (Nikolajeva and Carol Scott, 2006: 3; Hesampour et, al. 1393: 32-33).

After conducting the initial studies and encoding, the research data were presented to one of the experts in the field of teaching Arabic and their accuracy as well as their analytic competence were confirmed.in order to assess the reliability of data, about twenty percent of the content investigated by two authors were classified and encoded and after that 84 percent of the resulted correlation and its reliability were confirmed; this coefficient illustrates their reliability and the comprehensiveness. To achieve more reliable results, in addition to descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage), chi-square test was administered for data inferential analysis.



6. Results

The findings illustrate that in the studied areas, the symmetrical relationship is the highest frequent relationship and the attention paid to this kind of relationship is increasing in each grade. The text book authors ignored the contrastive as well as the multi-narrative relationships and an insignificant percentage has been devoted to increasing as well as complementary ones. According to the results of chi-square test, all of the junior high school Arabic text books are homogeneous and are in the same situation regarding the type of relationship. The text book authors weren’t creative and energetic in spatial arrangements as well as in compounding pictures. They haven’t used complicated and various relationships in illustrations.


Keywords

Subjects

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Language Related Research
Volume 13, Issue 4 - Serial Number 70
September and October 2022
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