TY - JOUR TI - Reports and commands: deciphering a health exhibition using the SPEAKING mnemonic AU -David H Lee PY - 2022 VL - IS - Autumn 2021 KW - health communication KW - science centres KW - SPEAKING mnemonic KW - speech acts AB - The Amazing You exhibition at the Tampa Museum of Science and Industry had over 400 different multimedia health exhibits. Visitors walked through life stages, from conception through death, the exhibits at first showcasing developmental milestones, then diseases and chronic conditions associated with ageing. Museum executives described the exhibition as a public health intervention that stressed disease prevention, screening and behaviour change. This piece considers the question: What makes an exhibition be a health intervention? To describe complexities of the communication environment I use a mnemonic device called SPEAKING, an acronym for ‘Scene/Setting, Participants, Ends, Act Sequence, Key, Instrumentalites, Norms and Genre’ (Hymes, 1974). This methodological tool from the ethnography of communication approach provides explanatory concepts from speech act theory, the interactional view of communication, and frame analysis. SPEAKING is an order of inquiry for understanding multimodal environments in museums, especially those that try to change behaviour. Using examples from exhibit descriptions and interviews, I consider the communicative dimensions of The Amazing You using SPEAKING. This work is intended for exhibitors, museum curators and researchers interested in informal learning and behaviour change. N1 - A more complete description of most of the exhibits in The Amazing You can be found in Lee, 2014. N1 - Incidentally, there are interesting similarities here with the systemic functional linguistics/multimodal-analytic distinction between ideational and interpersonal metafunction (Jewitt, 2009, p 24). N1 - To overcome the oral-centric implications of SPEAKING, I adapted the mnemonic into EXHIBITS for use in museum settings. See Figure 8. PB - The Science Museum Group SN - 2054-5770 LA - eng DO - 10.15180/211605 UR - https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/reports-and-commands-deciphering-a-health-exhibition-using-the-speaking-mnemonic/ T2 - Science Museum Group Journal