MULTIMODAL METALANGUAGE

1. MULTIMODALMETALANGUAGE http://multimodalityglossary.wordpress.com/about-the-glossary/

2. Affordance • Adapted by Kress (e.g. 2010), the term ‘modal affordance’ has particular currency in multimodality. It refers to the scope and limits of different modes – what it is possible to express and represent or communicate easily with the resources of a mode, and what is less straightforward or even impossible. It refers to the materially, culturally, socially and historically developed ways in which meaning is made with particular semiotic resources.

3. Coherence • Coherence names the effect of arrangements such that everything in the arrangement gives the appearance of ‘naturally’ belonging together. Theo van Leeuwen (2004) has developed notions of coherence to examine how multimodal cohesion is realized through composition, dialogue, information linking, and rhythm across a range of modes.

4. Colour • From a multimodal perspective Colour can be understood as a mode in that it consists of a set of elements and features, or semiotic resources, including hue, saturation, differentiation, modulation and purity. Certainly it is the case that the resources of colour are often combined with other modes (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2002:351).

5. Framing • Framing is the principle by which, on the one hand, any semiotic entity (any meaning-entity) – such as a ‘text’ or an ‘event’ – is given internal unity and (the possibility of) internal coherence; and by which, on the other hand, it is clearly marked as distinct from other units or events of the same kind.

6. Image • It is a term that is used to refer to many different things: photographs, drawings, impressionist paintings, film, three dimensional representations, and, beyond these, images in a mirror, dreams, memories, even the ‘mental images’ prompted by verbal descriptions. Multimodality attends to images that are material entities, such as photographs, monuments, film, and so on. It asks how the image has been made, what it is a representation of, what ideas and attitudes it communicates and how this is achieved, as well as investigating how social relations are constructed.

7. Language • Language is typically used refer to speech or writing, or both. In multimodality, speech and writing are treated as separate modes as they refer to different sets of semiotic resources. For instance, among other resources, speech has intensity (loudness), pitch and pitch variation (intonation), while writing has punctuation, type, and indentation.

8. Mode • This term refers to a set of socially and culturally shaped resources for making meaning.

9. Multimodality • Multimodality is an inter-disciplinary approach that understands communication and representation to be more than about language. It has been developed over the past decade to systematically address much-debated questions about changes in society, for instance in relation to new media and technologies.

10. Social semiotics • Social semiotics is an approach to communication that seeks to understand how people communicate by a variety of means in particular social settings. Modes of communication are what they are not because of a fixed set of rules and structures, but because of what they can accomplish socially.

11. Typography • Typography refers to the visual design of language through the selection of type font, size, line, and spacing. From a multimodal perspective Typography represents a mode/code in its own right, which interacts with other modes.