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Citation is a resource used in the design of meanings in socially shaped and regular ways and is central to academic voice. Citation across modes involves appropriating a source into your argument and using the voices of others to negotiate your position in a particular discourse community. The rhetorical function of citation is thus to enter the academic conversation. The term citation works better across modes than a term like quoting or paraphrasing or even referencing. It is thus useful for talking about multimodal texts.

We are very familiar with the conventions around citation in writing and how this impacts on voice. For instance, the choice of where to place a reference in academic writing has implications for authorial voice. A reference placed at the beginning of a sentence, as in Bakhtin (1981) indicates that … is different to a reference in brackets following a statement, as in: (Bakhtin, 1981). Citation in images is, however, less known to us, or, at least, less theorized. Citation in images can mostly be thought of as paraphrasing, for instance, drawing a cartoon from a painting or a flow chart from a diagram, or an abstract drawing of a building. However, these terms taken from writing do not work well when looking at citation in images. We need more precise semiotic terms to describe these processes. Gunther Kress has proposed more generic terms to talk about semiotic processes, namely transformation and transduction. Transformation refers to the processes of meaning change through the re-ordering of the elements in a text, but working within the same mode, such as writing (Kress 2010, 129). Transduction names the «process of moving meaning-material from one mode to another – from speech to image; from writing to film» (Kress 2010, 129). So, if you describe an image in writing, it is not so much paraphrasing as transducting from one mode to another.

Citation in three dimensional artefacts functions slightly differently to both writing and images. In Archer (2018), I propose that citation in three dimensional artefacts comprises intertextual negotiation with authoritative conventions, such as big names, art periods, and specific genres. Citation can also be thought of as connotative provenance. Of course, the notions of intertextuality and provenance apply to all texts, including writing, but I am using them now specifically to think about voice in designed artefacts. Provenance refers to the fact that we «constantly import signs from other contexts (another era, social group, culture) into the context in which we are now making a new sign, in order to signify ideas and values which are associated with that other context» (Kress & Van Leeuwen 2001, 10). Björkvall (2018) points to how provenance is concerned with connotational meanings that require specific cultural knowledge in order to be recognized, even as these meanings may change over time. To illustrate this idea of provenance, I take an example from my university campus (see Abbildung 5).

Abbildung 5: Citation as provenance: Decolonial Struggles

This is an image of the department of architecture building taken two years ago during the student protests, which I mentioned earlier. Pieces of paper are stuck on the windows, spelling the words Decolonial Struggles. Here the relationship between writing and place is important and the temporary nature of the message is evident by the fact that some of the papers had already peeled off the windows. What is interesting was that a week or two later the same font and aesthetic (and some of the wording) was then taken into a poster for advertising a particular event, called unsettling colonialism. I would argue that this is an example of citation as provenance. The poster draws on the aesthetics, values and discourses of the protest action by replicating a version of the typography as seen on the building. Interestingly, this is very local and in-house citation, as you needed to have been there and seen the transient slogans at a particular time and place. This example highlights sharply that citation is about creating communities, with both insiders and outsiders to those communities.

See Abbildung 6 below for another example of citation as provenance. They are bangles produced from plastic water bottles. When people do upcycling they draw on different discourses and these discourses provide much of the value adding that is the key feature of upcycling. Here the material of the artefact, namely plastic, has provenance in discourses of ethical consumerism (Archer & Björkvall 2018). Something as natural as water is a scarce resource in some global contexts and has become fashionably commodified into a branded product for consumption in others. Plastic water bottles are rife and are a scourge on the environment, but here they are upcycled to make something beautiful and of value. The colour blue is foregrounded, keeping the resonances of both the plastic bottle and the water it contained. The plastic and the silver weave together like ripples in water, creating a sense of movement, transparency, and translucency. These bangles and other products upcycled from waste materials indicate alignment with and indeed cite larger discourses of ethical consumerism, given the provenance of the upcycled materials.

I have argued that citation can be thought of in terms of the semiotic terms transduction and transformation of meaning material. In addition, I have emphasized that citation is crucial to academic voice as it concerns positioning oneself in relation to others, as well as in relation to particular conventions. This can be achieved through the provenance of semiotic resources chosen and the discourses that these resources index. Tabelle 1 below summarizes the framework for academic voice across writing, image, infographics and designed artefacts. Writing, images and information graphics are often co-present in texts in Higher Education. The types of texts realized predominantly through writing, however, include academic essays and reports. Those realized predominantly through images could be powerpoint presentations, storyboards, posters. Information graphics are present in texts in economics and the social sciences and others. Designed artefacts are specific to certain disciplines. There are, of course, other aspects of academic voice besides authorial engagement and citation. For instance, modality is another aspect to consider, the perceived credibility and truth value of a text. However, for the sake of analytical clarity, this particular framework only works with two aspects.

Abbildung 6: Provenance and materiality (Plastic water bottle and sterling silver bangles. Mikhela Hawker)

Aspect of Academic Voice	Realization through writing	Realization through image	Realization through information graphic	Realization through designed artefact
Authorial engagement Authorial engagement concerns the extent to which authors choose to engage with their audiences and subject matter, «their degree of intimacy or remoteness, and the ways they represent themselves in the discourse» (Hyland, 1999, 101).	Attitude markers – attitude verbs, necessity modals, adjectives Pronouns / person markers Active or passive voice Relational markers (e.g. rhetorical questions) Visual aspect of writing: typography, spelling, punctuation, white space.	Type and choice of image Composition – salience, spatial positioning (left, right, top, bottom, centre, periphery), directionality of vectors, framing Direct / indirect address by represented participants Point of view (Objective/subjective) Use of colour (e.g. colour saturation)	What is measured and summarized? Type and choice of graphic (e.g. pie charts, bar charts, line diagrams) Composition: ways of ordering (alphabetical or magnitude); positioning of elements (title, axes, legend) Relation between graphic and writing (footnotes, title, legend, labels)	Material choices Surface of the artefact Substance of the artefact Tools of production
Citation Citation involves appropriating a source into your own argument and thus creating a new composition, which necessarily has intertextual relations.	Quoting – number, length and function Paraphrasing – summary or generalization Integrated versus non-integrated citation	Transformation (Quoting or copying an image) Transduction: Paraphrasing (clip art, drawing over existing image); written into visual (flow diagrams)	Data generated empirically and no citation necessary Integration of own data with cited data Data compiled from multiple sources	Negotiation with authoritative conventions (such as big names, art periods, specific genres) Sensory and connotative provenance

Tabelle 1: A framework for looking at academic voice in multimodal texts