Presentation for TLTL

1. Multimodality Barney Ray Mamiko Noda

2. What is ‘multimodality’? Go to http://todaysmeet.com/multimodality Log on using your name Let’s backchannel in this class Please search the Internet for the definition of multimodality. And copy & paste it on the todays meet. Enjoy!

3. What meaning does this photo have?

4. How about now?

6. Writing

7. Layout…What other modes can you think of? Please backchannel them.

8. Any document/movie

9. Mode is a socially shaped and culturally given semiotic resource for making meaning. Image, writing, layout, music, gesture, speech,moving image, soudtrack,and 3D objects are examples of modes used in representation and communication. (Kress 2010) In fact, it is now no longer possible to understand language and its uses without understanding the effect of all modes of communication that are co-present in any text.(Kress 2000)

10. Think?? Multimodality is a new and rapidly developing sub-field of communication studies which looks beyond language to the multiple modes of communicating or making meaning - from images to sound and music. (IOE library) BUT… Kress (2010) says ‘The world of meaning has always been multimodal. Now, for a variety of reasons, that realization is once again moving centre-stage.’

11. How do you define ‘multimodality’? Different kinds of modes that we take in information from other people (Mamiko, 2010) Multimodality is understanding, how meaning is constructed (Barney, 2010) ……. How about you? Please backchannel your definition.

12. Materiality of modes Some modes are better suited for different circumstances. For example, you can do some things with images that you find it very difficult or even impossible to do with writing. A science class (Kress, 2000) My experience in teaching geometry words.

13. Adapted from Kress (2000)

14. The written text – as indeed the spoken – forces the reader (and the listener) to stick to its order: the elements have to be read in the sequence in which they occur. That is not the case, or far less so, with the image text. Yes, the elements are there in certain spatial relations, but how the reader reconstitutes them is largely up to the reader. The order of the written text is fixed; the order of the image text is (relatively) open. (Kress 2000)

15. What are the implications for our English teaching? Over to you, Norbert!!

16. References Kress,G (2010) Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication, NewYork: Routlegde Kress, G (2004) Retrieved on May 24 from http://www.knowledgepresentation.org/BuildingTheFuture/Kress2/Kress2.html Kress, G (2000) ‘Multimodality:Challenges to Thinking about language‘ TESOL Quarterly, 34(2),pp.337-340