September 16th, 2010
Week 2: our working definition
Week three version:
Multimodality can be defined as the production, study, and perceived meaning of modes used to communicate ideas, messages, and information. These different modes — images, alphabetic text, motion, color, texture, sound, smell — are influenced by social, economic, and cultural environments. Multimodal composers acknowledge potential emotional connections between audiences, texts, and meanings.
The interaction of these audiences, texts, and technologies is both intentionally and unintentionally determined by the hegemonic cultural rules that have been established by the culture sending the message, and by the one receiving.
What makes multimodal communication unique, compared to mono-modal communication, is the intersection and integration of various modes of communication to achieve the desired communiqué as the message would not be received properly if any of the modes used in multi-modal communication were split up. For example, watching a film produced with sound, yet muted. Or hearing the audio of that film and seeing no video component. In both examples the reading of the text becomes distorted.
With multimodal communication, the relationship between the composer and the reader becomes more accommodating to multiple interpretations.
working collective draft — in process:
Multimodality is the production, study, and perceived meaning of modes in order to communicate an idea, message, or information.
… in a culture or community
