New Approaches To Linguistics
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ScribdTranslationsNEW APPROACHES TO LINGUISTICS: MULTIMODALITY
Concept of multimodality
Multimodality, a line of research that has developed its studies since the last
decades of the 20th century, emerged in a context of great social and cultural changes
that characterize this period. The incipient development of technologies and mass
media in the last century meant an advance in the way in which people communicate
and a renewal in the dissemination of knowledge. Orality and writing seem insufficient
to report information and knowledge, so a shift towards the visual is necessary. This
new area of research bases its line of study on Systemic-Functional Linguistics
(Halliday, 1985)4. The options that written and oral language provide to individuals
correspond to semantic, lexical-grammatical and phonological, phonetic resources,
which are selected by the subjects in relation to the relevant factors of the specific
communicative situation they are faced with.
Later, Hodge and Kress (1988) reformulated the concept of social semiotics
and postulated that the construction of meaning is not limited to the linguistic mode.
These authors analyze how culture - and ideology in particular - is projected through
different semiotic systems such as images, gestures, gaze, posture, among others,
which are available to subjects and which allow them to construct meanings and
communicate in specific social and cultural contexts. Following the approaches of Kress
and van Leeuwen (2001), multimodality is understood as the use of various semiotic
systems for the construction of meaning and the design of semiotic products or events
in specific contexts.
This broad definition of multimodality encompasses a range of domains,
processes and products. Parodi (2010) defines the concept of multimodal written text
by conceptualizing four semiotic systems that complement and interact to construct
meanings. These semiotic systems are: the verbal system, the graphic system, the
mathematical system and the typographic system. The verbal system is made up of
words, phrases and sentences that give meaning through language; the graphic system
is made up of pictorial representations of various kinds, such as photographs and blank
spaces; the mathematical system is made up of graphs, signs or representations that
allow the symbolic encoding of information; and the typographic system carries
meaning to the text through its shape, dimensionality, color, letter size, among other
resources. Each of these semiotic systems interacts with the others in various ways in
order to construct meaning.
Likewise, semiotic systems can compose some resources or units called
multisemiotic artifacts, whose presence allows the effective communication of
knowledge. In his semiotic analysis of the representation and interpretation of graphic
signs in two-year-old children, Lancaster (2001) identifies three functions of the gaze:
analytical, interpersonal and expressive. His analysis of the relationship between
interpersonal and expressive aspects of gaze is particularly useful in examining -
behavioral texts. It is clear, then, that semiotic theory offers a wide scope for
proposing a framework that is capable of describing different multimodal texts.
Image: content, size, color tone, line, placement/use of space
Language: syntax and vocabulary.
Sound/vocalization: content, emphasis, volume, vocal intonation, pause, rhythm
Gaze: direction of the communicator's gaze or the character of the representation
Movement: gesture and posture.
Table 2: Categories of analysis. (Bearne, 2009)
Now, everyday discourse produced through virtual media also uses these
resources and has integrated them as part of its activity (Bourlari & Herring, 2014;
Herring, 2015). On the one hand, the recursiveness or multi-modality of interactions in
these media makes them a permanent communication relationship that develops on
different platforms (Alcántara-Pla, 2014) and with different degrees of multimodal
integration. Additionally, we can find in writing in virtual media the use of various
resources that users adapt to achieve their communication objectives, for example,
creative use of writing that can combine the verbal and mathematical semiotic system
in order to create artifacts similar to algebraic formulas (4ever, 2U, re100), use of
icons, known as emoticons, that give expressiveness to the discourse in this medium,
abundant use of photographs and videos that are mixed with written interactions,
among others.
Little by little, as new technologies were invented and with the combination of
photographs and texts, visual elements were incorporated into the texts as a
complement to the linguistic message. However, in recent decades, computers and
new digital forms of diagramming have accelerated this process and, consequently, the
visual message has become more important in understanding written text. One of the
manifestations of this passage from printed text to computer screen (from page to
screen) is the creation of a new type of discourse in which the traditional relationship
between addressee and recipient is now mediated by a machine, by a technology that
offers new possibilities to its users every day. Social groups are consequently divided
into those belonging to the screen (or post-typo-graphic) generation and those
belonging to the typographic group. In the Anglo-Saxon world, reflection on these
changes led some authors to coin the term “new communicative order” (Street, 1998;
Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996; Lankshear, 1997), which is associated with the
development of new electronic communication systems that have as characteristics a
global reach, the integration of all communication media and potential interactivity
(Castells, 1996). A subgroup of this screen generation has been dubbed “screenagers,”
who have not only grown up with the computer but also with the ability to seamlessly
connect to the Internet, download MP3 music, send instant messages online, and text
on cell phones all at the same time. Referring to this reality of the recent youth
generation in the United States, Brant 2003 admitted that “it is no surprise that these
screenagers think beyond the text.”
An example of this is the ease with which students can draw, paint, sing and
dance, as well as produce their own digital films, master complex computer games and
participate in the creation of interactive websites, which implies that literacy today
goes beyond knowledge and the encoding and decoding of letters. New literacies seek
to take advantage of the multimodal and flexible characteristics that hypermedia
provide to generate thinking skills, promote learning, and stimulate the student's
ability to generate critical questions.
Annexes
Literature
Farias, M. (2012). Multimodaliad.Lenguaje y Aprendizajes1. Contribucines cientifica
tecnologícas, 26-31.
García, J. G. (2013). La fabetización multimodal: usos y posibilidades. Campo Abierto.Revista de
Educación, vol. 32 n° 1, pp 91-113.
Gladic Miralles, J. &.-E. (2006). UNA MlRADA A LOS MODELOS MULTIMODALES DE
COMPRENSIÓN Y APRENDIZAJE A PARTIR DEL TEXTO. ScIELO,Literatura y lingüística, ,
(34), 357-380.