Monomodality
20 th
Dominated modern Western culture. Reversing tendencies.
Century semiotics Inspired by the desire to cross boundaries. General theoretical framework applicable to all semiotic modes.
Multimodality Within a given social-cultural domain, the ‘same’ meaning expressed in various semiotic modes. Common semiotic principles operate in and across different modes.
The issue of meaning in a multimodal theory of communication
Practices and resources rather than fixed, stable entities. Multimodal texts: make
Strata meaning in multiple articulations. Four domains of practice in which meaning is made – strata: discourse,
1. Discourse
2. Design
3. Production design, production, distribution.
Socially constructed knowledges of reality. Specific social contexts, appropriate to the interests of social actors.
Relatively independent of mode and genre. But realised in semiotic modes that have developed the means for realising them.
Between content and expression. Uses of semiotic resources, in all semiotic modes and combinations of semiotic modes. Means to realise discourse.
The organisation of expression to the actual material articulation of the semiotic event/artefact. Medium of execution.
4. Distribution
Articulation and interpretation
Communication Depends on both articulation and interpretation (>
Luhmann).
Stratal configurations
Writing
Blurring distinction between distribution media and production media.
1. Provenance
> disrupted the link between discourse and production.
Produced a language, a semiotic resource, no longer tied to its material realisation.
‘Where signs come from’. Closely related to Barthes myths and connotations.
2. Experiental meaning potential
Signifiers have a meaning potential deriving form what it is we do when we produce them. ‘Breathiness’. Closely related to Lakoff and Johnson’s view of the metaphor.
Stephanie’s bedroom as a multimodal text
As part of familiy life Children’s bedrooms as socially constructed knowledges discourses about families. Analysis of House Beautiful article. Also about changing family-discourses the last century > how this has changed our houses and our conceptions of family. In the House Beautiful article, arguments are presented as common sense, not explicitely formulated.

The story of how Stephanie’s room was produced: as a new invention rather than based on choices from mental or actual catalogues of socially available possibilities.
Conclusion
Multimodality
Communication
As the use of several semiotic modes in the design of a semiotic product or event, and the ways in which these modes are combined.
A process in which a semiotic product or event is both articulated or produced and interpreted or used.
Recapitulation
Strata < distinction between the content and the expression of communication, including between signifier and signified.
Writing > content further stratified into design and content
Modern comm. Techn. > further stratified into production and distribution
Layers of signification Each strata produce their own layers of signification.
Discourse Socially situated forms of knowledge about aspects of reality.
Design Conceptualisations of the form of semiotic products and events. 1) formulation of a discourse or combination of
Production
Distribution
Mode
(this is sort of unclear)
Medium
Experiental meaning potential
Provenance discourses. 2) a particular (inter)action in which the discourse is embedded. 3) particular way of combining semiotic modes.
The articulation in material form of semiotic products or events. The significance of the material products used.
The technical re-coding of semiotic products and events for purposes of recording and/or distribution. Generally intended as reproductions technologies, but soon acquire a semiotic potential of their own.
Semiotic resources which allow the simultaneous realisation of discourses and types of (inter)action. Can be realised in more than one production medium. Narrative as a mode. Media become modes once their principles of semiosis begin to be conceived in more abstract ways, as
‘grammars’ of some kind.
The material resources used in the production of semiotic products and events.
Material signifiers have a meaning potential < derives from what we do when we articulate them.
Signs may be imported from one context into another, to signify the ideas and values associated with that other context by those who do the importing.