Multimodality : a social semiotic approach to contemporary communication / Gunther Kress.

Contributor(s):

Kress, Gunther R

Material type: Text

TextPublication details: London : Routledge, 2010.Description: xvi, 212 s., tav [4] : illISBN:

9780415320610 (pbk.)
0415320615 (pbk.)

Subject(s):

DDC classification:

302.2 KRE

Summary: The 21st century is awash with ever more 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. Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication represents a long-awaited and much anticipated addition to the study of multimodality from the scholar who pioneered and continues to play a decisive role in shaping the field. Written in an accessible manner and illustrated with a wealth of photos and illustrations to clearly demonstrate the points made, Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication deliberately sets out to locate communication in the everyday, covering topics and issues not usually discussed in books of this kind, from traffic signs to mobile phones. In this book, Gunther Kress presents a contemporary, distinctive and widely applicable approach to communication. He provides the framework necessary for understanding the attempt to bring all modes of meaning-making together under one unified theoretical roof. This exploration of an increasingly vital area of language and communication studies will be of interest to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in the fields of English language and applied linguistics, media and communication studies and education.

Holdings
Item type	Current library	Call number	Copy number	Status	Date due	Barcode
Standard Loan	LSAD Library Main Collection	302.2 KRE (Browse shelf(Opens below))	1	Available		39002100467449

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication represents a long-awaited and much anticipated addition to the study of multimodality from the scholar who pioneered and continues to play a decisive role in shaping the field. Written in an accessible manner and illustrated with a wealth of photos and illustrations to clearly demonstrate the points made, Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication deliberately sets out to locate communication in the everyday, covering topics and issues not usually discussed in books of this kind, from traffic signs to mobile phones.

In this book, Gunther Kress presents a contemporary, distinctive and widely applicable approach to communication. He provides the framework necessary for understanding the attempt to bring all modes of meaning-making together under one unified theoretical roof.

This exploration of an increasingly vital area of language and communication studies will be of interest to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in the fields of English language and applied linguistics, media and communication studies and education.

1. Multimodality: A New Approach to Questions of Meaning 2. Signs 3. Modes and Materiality 4. Texts and Messages 5. Media, Messages, Texts 6. Design and Production 7. Doing Multimodal Analysis 8. Thinking and Looking Ahead.

The 21st century is awash with ever more 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. Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication represents a long-awaited and much anticipated addition to the study of multimodality from the scholar who pioneered and continues to play a decisive role in shaping the field. Written in an accessible manner and illustrated with a wealth of photos and illustrations to clearly demonstrate the points made, Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication deliberately sets out to locate communication in the everyday, covering topics and issues not usually discussed in books of this kind, from traffic signs to mobile phones. In this book, Gunther Kress presents a contemporary, distinctive and widely applicable approach to communication. He provides the framework necessary for understanding the attempt to bring all modes of meaning-making together under one unified theoretical roof. This exploration of an increasingly vital area of language and communication studies will be of interest to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in the fields of English language and applied linguistics, media and communication studies and education.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

List of illustrations (p. xi)
Preface (p. xiii)
Acknowledgements (p. xvii)
Chapter 1 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)
Chapter 2 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)
Chapter 3 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)
Chapter 4 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)
Chapter 5 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)
Chapter 6 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)
Chapter 7 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)
Chapter 8 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)
Chapter 9 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)
Chapter 10 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)

Author notes provided by Syndetics

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.