Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication

by Kress; Gunther

• ISBN13: 9780415320610
• ISBN10: 0415320615
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-12-10
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The twenty-first century is awash with evermore mixed and remixed images, writing, layout, sound, gesture, speech and 3D objects. Multimodality looks beyond language and examines these multiple modes of communication and meaning-making.

Author Biography

Gunther Kress is Professor of Semiotics and Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. His numerous titles include Reading Images (co-author with Theo van Leeuwen, 2nd edn, 2006), Early Spelling (1999), Before Writing (1997) and Learning to Write (1993); all published by Routledge.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. xi
Preface	p. xiii
Acknowledgements	p. xvii
Where meaning is the issue	p. 1
Multimodality: simple, really	p. 1
From semiotic system to semiotic resource	p. 5
Cultural difference and communication: the 'reach' of the theory and the 'reach' of modes	p. 8
The politics of naming	p. 12
A satellite view of language	p. 15
The social environment of contemporary communication	p. 18
An ethical approach to communication	p. 18
Assumptions	p. 19
Environments for communication: social frames and communicational possibilities	p. 19
Power, authority and authorship	p. 21
Social and theoretical consequences: ruling metaphors of participation, design, and production	p. 22
Personal choices: existential insecurity or agency through participation and connection	p. 23
Communication and meaning: fluidity, provisionality, Instability	p. 23
A prospective theory of communication: rhetoric, design, production	p. 26
From language and grammar to semiotic resources	p. 27
Mobility and portability	p. 28
A word on 'pace'	p. 29
The need for apt metaphors	p. 30
Communication: shaping the domain of meaning	p. 32
Communication as semiotic work: a sketch of a theory	p. 32
'Reading' and the reader's design of meaning	p. 37
Provisionality in communication: rhetoric and design, newly configured	p. 43
Environments of communication: a historical view	p. 46
Refashioning social and semiotic domains: rhetoric and design	p. 49
A social-semiotic theory of multimodality	p. 54
From a linguistic to a multimodal social-semiotic theory of meaning and communication	p. 54
Linguistics, pragmatics and a social-semiotic approach to representation	p. 56
Horses for courses: apt theories, useful framing	p. 60
The motivated sign	p. 62
The everyday, the banal and the motivated sign	p. 65
Interest and the partiality of representation	p. 70
Mimesis, signs and embodied experience	p. 76
Mode	p. 79
Materiality and affordance: the social making of mode	p. 79
The 'reach' of modes	p. 83
What is a mode?	p. 84
Is layout a mode?	p. 88
Mode, meaning, text: 'fixing' and 'framing'	p. 93
Mode as technology of transcription	p. 96
Meaning as resource: 'naming' in a multimodal social-semiotic theory	p. 103
Naming aptly	p. 103
New frames, new names	p. 105
Making signs: resources, processes and agency	p. 107
Processes and effects:-making and remaking meaning	p. 120
Design and arrangements: making meaning material	p. 132
Design in contemporary conditions of text-making	p. 132
Design an essential (re)focusing	p. 133
What is design? A homely example	p. 135
Design in social-semiotic environments	p. 137
Changes in design: a brief look at recent history	p. 141
Arrangements: making meanings material	p. 145
What else is framed?	p. 153
Discourse: ontological and epistemological framing	p. 157
Multimodal orchestrations and ensembles of meaning	p. 159
The world arranged by me; the world arranged for me	p. 159
The world arranged by me, the world arranged for me: orchestrating ensembles, staging of movement, motion, 'pace'	p. 162
Aesthetics, style and ethics in multimodal ensembles	p. 169
Applying the theory: learning and evaluation; identity and knowledge	p. 174
Learning and identity in a communicational frame	p. 174
Reading as design	p. 175
Semiosis, meaning and learning	p. 178
Recognition, metrics and principles of assessment	p. 182
The social semiotics of convergent mobile devices: new forms of composition and the transformation of habitus	p. 184
The social frame for the semiotic analysis	p. 184
The affordances of Smartphones: a social-semiotic account	p. 185
Affordances of the hardware	p. 186
'Shape': designers' intentions and social implications	p. 187
The representational affordances	p. 187
The functionalities	p. 189
Mobile Web access and usability: changes in social habitus	p. 190
Implications	p. 193
Gains and losses: some open questions	p. 195
References	p. 198
Index	p. 205
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.