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Concept
Multimodality
Summary
Multimodality is the application of multiple literacies within one medium. Multiple literacies or "modes" contribute to an audience's understanding of a composition. Everything from the placement of images to the organization of the content to the method of delivery creates meaning. This is the result of a shift from isolated text being relied on as the primary source of communication, to the image being utilized more frequently in the digital age. Multimodality describes communication practices in terms of the textual, aural, linguistic, spatial, and visual resources used to compose messages.
While all communication, literacy, and composing practices are and always have been multimodal, academic and scientific attention to the phenomenon only started gaining momentum in the 1960s. Work by Roland Barthes and others has led to a broad range of disciplinarily distinct approaches. More recently, rhetoric and composition instructors have included multimodality in their coursework. In their position statement on Understanding and Teaching Writing: Guiding Principles, the National Council of Teachers of English state that "'writing' ranges broadly from written language (such as that used in this statement), to graphics, to mathematical notation."
Although multimodality discourse mentions both medium and mode, these terms are not synonymous. However, their precise extents may overlap depending on how precisely (or not) individual authors and traditions use the terms.
Gunther Kress's scholarship on multimodality is canonical with social semiotic approaches and has considerable influence in many other approaches, such as in writing studies. Kress defines 'mode' in two ways. One: a mode is something that can be socially or culturally shaped to give something meaning. Images, pieces of writing, and speech patterns are all examples of modes. Two: modes are semiotic, shaped by intrinsic characteristics and their potential within their medium, as well as what is required of them by their culture or society.
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