Modulo 3.

Why engage with multimodality?

Multimodality is the normal state of human communication
A spoken text is never just verbal, but also visual, combining with modes such as facial
expression, gesture, posture and other forms of self-representation.
A written text, similarly, involves more than language: it is written on something, on some
material (paper, wood, vellum, stone, metal, rock, etc.) and it is written with something (gold,
ink, (en)gravings, dots of paint, etc.); with letters formed as types of font, influenced by
aesthetic, psychological, pragmatic and other considerations; and with layout imposed on
the material substance, whether on the page, the computer screen or a polished brass
plaque.

What is multimodality?
The combination of different semiotic modes […] in a communicative artefact or event.
A mode is a socially and culturally shaped set of resources for making meaning. Image,
writing, layout, speech, moving image are examples of modes. Meanings are made in a
variety of modes and always with more than one mode.
Multimodal grammar
Multimodal Analysis: Key Issues
Three theoretical assumptions are central:
1. Representation and Communication always draw on a multiplicity of modes;
2. Multimodality assumes that all forms of communication (modes) have, like language, been
shaped through their cultural, historical and social uses to realize social functions;
3. The meanings realized by any mode are always interwoven with the meanings made with
those other modes co-present and co-operating in the communicative event.

Modal Affordance
Modal affordance is a concept that originated in the work of Gibson (1977) and describes
what is possible to express and represent easily in a mode.
Principles of composition
(1) ​Information value​. The placement of elements (participants and syntagms that relate
them to each other and to the viewer) endows them with the specific informational values
attached to the various ‘zones’ of the image: left and right, top and bottom, center and
margin.
(2)​ Salience​. The elements (participants as well as representational and interactive
syntagms) are made to attract the viewer’s attention to different degrees, as realized by such
factors as placement in the foreground or background, relative size, contrasts in tonal value
(or color), differences in sharpness, etc.
(3) ​Framing​. The presence or absence of framing devices (realized by elements which
create dividing lines, or by actual frame lines) disconnects or connects elements of the
image, signifying that they belong or do not belong together in some sense.
Representation & engagement
The way images represent the relations between the people, places and things they depict,
and the complex set of relations that can exist between images and their viewers.
How to do Critical Discourse
Analysis Analyzing semiotic choices: Words and Images

Toolkit
Toolkit for analyzing how people make semiotic choices in language and visual
communication in order to achieve their communicative aim. We start from the simplest form
of analysis by considering how authors make choices in individual semiotic resources, in
terms of individual words and individual visual elements. Each of these kinds of resources
can allow the author to set up a basic shape of a social and natural world through their
speech, text or image. It allows them to highlight some kinds of meanings and to background
others.
Lexical analysis
One of the most basic kinds of linguistic analysis is lexical analysis.
This means simply looking at what kind of words are used in a text.
We simply ask:
- What kind of vocabulary is used?
- Does the author tend to use certain kinds of words and avoid others? (e.g. Boo words,
Hooray words, euphemisms…).

Lexical Fields
Word choices can signify different discourses or set up different ‘lexical fields’.
These discourses or fields will signify certain kinds of identities, values and sequences of
activities which are not necessarily made explicit.
Lexical analysis may help us identify ‘implicit’ or ‘indirect’ meanings in texts. These are the
kinds of meanings that are alluded to without being explicitly addressed.
“Implicit meanings are related to underlying beliefs, but are not openly, directly, completely
or precisely addressed” (Van Dijk 2001, 104).

Iconographical Analysis
One of the simplest kinds of analysis in MDA is iconographical analysis. This means we
explore the way that individual elements in images, such as objects and settings are able to
signify discourses in ways that might not be obvious at an initial viewing. We ask which
individual features and elements are foregrounded and which are backgrounded or
excluded.
Linguistic and visual affordances
Visual and linguistic resources have different affordances, they are more suitable for
different kinds of purposes. We are not told ‘this is not what you will look like at work’ but the
image serves to bring particular associations of glamour and modernity to bear on the story
we are told.

Word connotations
“Youths attack local buildings”
“Youths attack local addresses”
“Youths attack local family homes”
Example:​ Loughborough University is a dynamic, forward looking institution, committed to
being a center of excellence in teaching, learning and enterprise. We have much to be proud
of – surveys in the media constantly rate Loughborough as a top University. In June 2006
the Times Good University Guide ranked Loughborough University the sixth highest
university in the UK.

Overlexicalization
Overlexicalization “results when a surfeit of repetitious, quasi-synonymous terms is woven
into the fabric of news discourse, giving rise to a sense of overcompleteness” (Teo 2000,
20).
Examples:
-Male Nurse
-Female Doctor
-“Certainly our Armed Forces victorious in the battle against the unpatriotic forces of Marxist
subversion were accused of supposed violations to human rights”. (El Soldado, April 1989).

La lezione 8 va guardata da moodle che alle prof pesava il culo a scrivere le cose,
dato che hanno caricato foto di testi/libri.

Visual Semiotic Choices

The texts we come across often communicate not only through word choices but also
through non-linguistic features and elements. Also written texts communicate partly through
choice of font type, color of font, line spacing, alignment of text and even the materiality of
the support.

Iconography
According to Roland Barthes, images can denote and connote. On one level, images show
particular events, particular people, places and things or they denote. Asking what an image
denotes is asking: who and/or what is depicted here?
Other images still depict particular people, places, things and events, but ‘denotation’ is not
their primary or only purpose. They depict people, places, things and events to get the
general or abstract ideas across. They use them to connote ideas and concepts. Asking
what an image connotes is asking: what ideas or values are communicated through what is
represented and how it is represented?

Example​:The image denotes a woman and a desk. What discourses are communicated in
terms of represented participants, attitudes, values and actions? The image communicates a
particular set of values about glamour, excitement and women’s identities.

Salience
• Size
• Color
• Tone
• Focus
• Foregrounding
• Overlapping
La decima e ultima lezione è un recap di tutti i moduli, ci sono anche degli esempi
delle domande che ci saranno all’esame.

Kissini.