Beginning with theory, focusing on insider stories about modes, how they work, and how to work with them, then concluding with the implications and application of such information, this text brings the multiple modes together into an integrated theory of multimodality.

In today’s digital world, we have multiple modes of meaning-making: sounds, images, hypertexts. Yet, within literacy education, even ‘new’ literacies, we know relatively little about how to work with and produce modally complex texts. In Working with Multimodality, Jennifer Rowsell focuses on eight modes: words, images, sounds, movement, animation, hypertext, design and modal learning. Throughout the book each mode is illustrated by cases studies based on the author’s interviews with thirty people, who have extensive experience working with a mode in their field. From a song writer to a well known ballet dancer, these people all discuss what it means to do multimodality well. This accessible textbook brings the multiple modes together into an integrated theory of multimodality. Step-by-step, beginning with theory then exploring modes and how to work with them, before concluding with how to apply this in an investigation, each stage of working with multimodality is covered. Working with Multimodality will help students and scholars to: • Think about specific modes and how they function • Consider the implications for multimodal meaning-making • Become familiar with conventions and folk knowledge about given modes • Apply this same knowledge to their own production of media texts in classrooms Assuming no prior knowledge about multimodality and its properties, Working with Multimodality is designed to appeal to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in how learning and innovation is different in a digital and media age and is an essential textbook for courses in literacy, new media and multimodality within applied linguistics , education and communication studies.

Gunther Kress, a pioneer in the field of multimodality and the co-author of the bestselling Reading Images, produces a comprehensive theoretical framework for the study of the topic providing sample analyses and suggestions for further reading.

This groundbreaking work takes multimodality studies in a new direction by applying multimodal approaches to the study of poetry and poetics. The book examines poetry’s visual and formal dimensions, applying framing theory to such case studies as Aristotle’s Poetics and Robert Lowell’s "The Heavenly Rain", to demonstrate both the implied, due to the form’s unique relationship with structure, imagery, and rhythm, and explicit forms of multimodality at work, an otherwise little-explored research strand of multimodality studies. The volume explores the theoretical implications of a multimodal approach to poetry and poetics to other art forms and fields of study, making this essential reading for students and scholars working at the intersection of language and communication, including multimodality, discourse analysis, and interdisciplinary literary studies.

To many academics, composition still represents typewritten texts on 8.5" x 11" pages that follow rote argumentative guidelines. In Toward a Composition Made Whole, Jody Shipka views composition as an act of communication that can be expressed through any number of media and as a path to meaning-making. Her study offers an in-depth examination of multimodality via the processes, values, structures, and semiotic practices people employ every day to compose and communicate their thoughts. Shipka counters current associations that equate multimodality only with computer, digitized, or screen-mediated texts, which are often self-limiting. She stretches the boundaries of composition to include a hybridization of aural, visual, and written forms. Shipka analyzes the work of current scholars in multimodality and combines this with recent writing theory to create her own teaching framework. Among her methods, Shipka employs process-oriented reflection and a statement of goals and choices to prepare students to compose using various media in ways that spur their rhetorical and material awareness. They are encouraged to produce unusual text forms while also learning to understand the composition process as a whole. Shipka presents several case studies of students working in multimodal composition and explains the strategies, tools, and spaces they employ. She then offers methods to critically assess multimodal writing projects. Toward a Composition Made Whole challenges theorists and compositionists to further investigate communication practices and broaden the scope of writing to include all composing methods. While Shipka views writing as crucial to discourse, she challenges us to always consider the various purposes that writing serves.

This textbook provides the first foundational introduction to the practice of analysing multimodality, covering the full breadth of media and situations in which multimodality needs to be a concern. Readers learn via use cases how to approach any multimodal situation and to derive their own specifically tailored sets of methods for conducting and evaluating analyses. Extensive references and critical discussion of existing approaches from many disciplines and in each of the multimodal domains addressed are provided. The authors adopt a problem-oriented perspective throughout, showing how an appropriate foundation for understanding multimodality as a phenomenon can be used to derive strong methodological guidance for analysis as well as supporting the adoption and combination of appropriate theoretical tools. Theoretical positions found in the literature are consequently always related back to the purposes of analysis rather than being promoted as valuable in their own right. By these means the book establishes the necessary theoretical foundations to engage productively with today’s increasingly complex combinations of multimodal artefacts and performances of all kinds.

Translation and Multimodality: Beyond Words is one of the first books to explore how translation needs to be redefined and reconfigured in contexts where multiple modes of communication, such as writing, images, gesture, and music, occur simultaneously. Bringing together world-leading experts in translation theory and multimodality, each chapter explores important interconnections among these related, yet distinct, disciplines. As communication becomes ever more multimodal, the need to consider translation in multimodal contexts is increasingly vital. The various forms of meaning-making that have become prominent in the twenty-first century are already destabilising certain time-honoured translation-theoretic paradigms, causing old definitions and assumptions to appear inadequate. This ground-breaking volume explores these important issues in relation to multimodal translation with examples from literature, dance, music, TV, film, and the visual arts. Encouraging a greater convergence between these two significant disciplines, this text is essential for advanced students and researchers in Translation Studies, Linguistics, and Communication Studies.

Gunther Kress, one of the founders of social semiotics and multimodality, has made lasting contributions to these fields through his work in semiotics and meaning-making; power and identity; agency, design, production; and pedagogy and learning; in varied sites of transformation. This book brings together leading scholars in a variety of disciplines, including social semiotics, pedagogy, linguistics, media and communication studies, new literacy studies, ethnography, academic literacy, literary criticism and, more recently, medical/clinical education, to examine and build upon his work. This disciplinary diversity is evidence of the ways in which Kress' work has influenced and been influenced by a wide range of academic work and intellectual endeavors and how it has been used to lay foundations for theory-building and concept development in a varied yet connected range of areas. The individual contributions to the book pick up the threads of the often collaborative work of the authors with Kress; they show how these approaches were subsequently developed and discuss what future trajectories the authors see for them.

This state-of-the-art account of research and theorizing brings together multimodality, learning and communication through detailed analyses of signmakers and their meaning-making in museums, hospitals, schools and the home environment. By analyzing video recordings, photographs, screenshots and print materials, Jeff Bezemer and Gunther Kress go well beyond the comfortable domains of traditional sites of (social) semiotic and multimodal research. They steer away from spurious invention and naming of ever more new and exciting domains, focusing instead on fundamentals in assembling a set of tools for current tasks: namely, describing and analyzing learning and communication in the contemporary world as one integrated field. The theory outlined in the book is grounded in the findings of the authors’ wide-ranging empirical investigations. Each chapter evaluates the work that is being done and has been done, challenging accepted wisdom and standing much of it on its head. With extensive illustrations and many examples presented to show the reach and applicability of the theory, this book is essential reading for all those working in multimodality, semiotics, applied linguistics and related areas. Images from the book are also available to view online at www.routledge.com/9780415709620/

This open access book provides an introduction to multimodality and the role of multimodal texts in today’s education. Presenting a comprehensive framework for analysing and working with multimodal texts in disciplinary education, it serves as a tool for researchers and teachers alike. The second part of the book focuses on sample analyses of a variety of educational texts for different age groups and from different disciplines, including games and online resources. The authors also comment on the specific challenges of each text, and how teachers can discuss such texts with their students to enhance both their understanding of the content and their multimodal literacy. The book is intended for researchers in fields like education and multimodal studies, and for teacher educators, regardless of school subject or age group. With the combined perspectives on text analysis and implications for education, the book addresses the needs of teachers who want to work with multimodal aspects of texts in education in informed ways, but lack the right tools for such work.