Part A - Multimodal concepts and genres

This week, the set readings are:

Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Hodder Arnold. Chapter 1: Introduction.

Bateman, J. A. (2008). Multimodality and genre: A foundation for the systematic analysis of multimodal documents. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Chapter 5: Multimodal documents and genre.

The optional reading is:

Lemke, J. L. (2002). Travels in hypermodality. Visual Communication, 1(3), 299-325.

Pre-­-reading task-

In multimodality, we study communication involving many semiotic modes.

• What is a mode? (Note -­- this is not the same as the term ‘mode' as used in systemic functional linguistics when talking about field, tenor and mode.)

• Can you give any examples?

Now watch the the following video where Gunther Kress discusses the question of what a mode is.

Self-­-assessment task-

After you have completed the reading task above, complete the self-­-assessment questions that follow.

1. Give examples of framing in different modes.

2. According to the authors, what are discourses?

3. According to the authors, what is meant by ‘socially constructed'?

4. What is the relation between design content and expression?

5. According to the authors, what is design?

6. According to the authors, why is language a semiotic mode?

7. According to the authors, why is writing a semiotic mode?

8. According to the authors, what is production?

9. Why are design, production, mode and medium sometimes hard to separate?

10. Explain in your own words what ‘distribution' is.

11. According to the authors, what does communication depend on?

12. Explain how everyday conversation differs from the speech of professional voice-­-over specialists with reference to discourse, design, production, and distribution.

13. According to the authors, what is provenance?

14. According to the authors, what is experiential meaning potential?

15. Why are magazine portrayals of children's bedrooms ‘selective' and ‘gendered'?

16. What do discourses do?

17. Why do the authors argue that children's bedrooms are a pedagogical tool?

18. Explain the roles of discourse, design, and production in relation to children's bedrooms.

Part B- Multimodality and social action: Pedagogy and analysis

This week, the set readings are:

Jewitt, C. (2006). Technology, literacy and learning: A multimodal approach.

London: Routledge. Chapter 7: Pedagogy as design.

Martin, J. R. (2009). Boomer dreaming: The texture of re-­-colonisation in a lifestyle magazine. In G. Forey & G. Thompson (Eds.), Text type and texture (pp. 252-­-284). London: Equinox.

Self-­-assessment task

After you have completed the reading task above, complete the self-­-assessment questions that follow.

1. What shapes a teacher's pedagogy in a lesson?

2. What is the difference between a focus on ‘teaching style' and ‘pedagogy as design'? What does each focus on?

3. What aspects of the educational context and choices available to the teacher inform the teacher's design of pedagogy?

4. What shapes the choices available to the teacher?

5. In your own words, what does Jewitt mean by viewing pedagogy "as the designed marshalling of ‘curriculum content' and ‘social relations' into a ‘coherent text'"?

6. What does Jewitt mean by ‘takes on the world'?

7. For Jewitt, what is interpersonal meaning in pedagogy?

8. For Jewitt, what is ideational meaning in pedagogy?

9. At the most basic level, what is a teacher's pedagogic design a question of?

10. What government policies affect social relations in English classrooms in the UK?

11. What differences did Jewitt observe between science and English classrooms?

12. What can the use of new technologies in the classroom reconfigure?

13. What can produce change, according to Jewitt?

14. What factors and/or stakeholders affect the choice of technologies used in the classroom?

15. What does a technology or a resource not do, and what can it do according to Jewitt?

16. What does Jewitt call the pedagogic model in the ‘traditional' classroom?

17. How does Jewitt describe the pedagogic model in the ‘technologised' classroom?

18. What is meant by the ‘material affordance' of a technology in a classroom according to Jewitt?

19. What is meant by the ‘social affordance' of a technology in a classroom according to Jewitt?

20. Jewitt says the teacher is involved in weaving (or designing) a complex multimodal ‘text' for the class (i.e. a lesson). What factors are weaved together by the teacher as mentioned by Jewitt? Can you add any?

21. What technologies are available to this teacher?

22. How did the teacher ‘animate' the concept of ‘particles' without the use of models?

23. How did the teacher ‘animate' the concept of ‘particles' with the use of models?

24. According to Jewitt, what factors were relevant to this teacher designing this pedagogical approach for this lesson?

25. What is the role of the student in this pedagogical design?

26. What does the CD-­-ROM include in the unit on particles and matter? What are the implications for the role of the teacher?

27. What are the different interactive patterns in the first and second part of the lesson?

28. What is the contribution of room design to the ‘scattered' focus of students in the first part of the lesson?

29. How is this related to the students taking up "different roles in the lesson, in particular the role of ‘expert' or ‘peer tutor'"?

30. What choices does the teacher make in his ‘re-­-design' of the social relations of the classroom in the second part of the lesson?

31. How do many UK teachers use interactive whiteboards, and why?

32. How does the teacher transform images on a screen into his own actions? Why does he do this?

33. What does the ‘Hide Particles' view require teacher and learner to do in order to ‘bring the steam into existence'? How does the teacher use this pedagogically?

34. Why is the teacher's choice of ways to use the ‘Hide Particles' and ‘View Particles' views pedagogically important?

35. What design factors are at play in determining the social relations in a classroom?

36. What, according to Jewitt, is the work of a teacher?

37. Why can new technologies create tensions that ‘old' technologies do not?

38. In the example of the lesson on ionisation, how did the teacher design the relationship between content (ideational meanings) and social relations (interpersonal meanings)? Why do you think this wasn't successful?

Reflection task

1. What technologies do you use in your professional work? Include ‘old' technologies (for teachers, this might include blackboards, whiteboards, furniture, books) and ‘new' technologies (for teachers, this might include computers, tablets, mobile phones, interactive whiteboards, video cameras).

2. How has the use of a new technology impacted your professional practice? Think of the way that you have had to re-­-design your work. What has been your multimodal response to a new technology? (Put another way, how have you had to change your use of language, image, gesture, movement, design of space, and so on in your work due to a technological change?)

Reading task

Read the following extracts:
• pp. 252-­-7 (Section 12.1 Tackling a Text; Section 12.2 Preparing)
• pp. 280-­-1 (Section 12.6 Motivation) from:

Martin, J. R. (2009). Boomer dreaming: The texture of re-­-colonisation in a lifestyle magazine. In G. Forey & G. Thompson (Eds.), Text type and texture (pp. 252-­-284). London: Equinox.

Self-­-assessment task

After you have completed the reading task above, complete the self-­-assessment questions that follow.

1. What analytical methods does Martin use in this chapter?

2. What is a ‘kicker'?

3. What is the genre of each image?

4. To what genre does the verbal text belong? What variations to the typical pattern of this genre are evident in this text.

5. Why did Martin choose to analyse this text?

6. What does Martin mean when he calls Fitzsimmons' article a ‘re-­-colonisation'?

7. For Martin, what does there have to be behind every analysis?

Part C - Building and linking concepts

This week, the set readings are:

Royce, T. D. (1998). Synergy on the page: Exploring intersemiotic complementarity in page-­-based multimodal text. JASFL Occasional Papers, 1(1), 25-­-49. Available online at: http://www.forlingua.com/downloads/Royce1999JASFLOccasionalPaper sNo.1.pdf.
Pages 25-­-35 only.

Derewianka, B., & Coffin, C. (2008). Time visuals in history textbooks: Some pedagogic issues. In L. Unsworth (Ed.), Multimodal semiotics: Functional analysis in contexts of education (pp. 187-­-200). London and New York: Continuum.

Reading task

Royce, T. D. (1998). Synergy on the page: Exploring intersemiotic complementarity in page-­-based multimodal text. JASFL Occasional Papers, 1(1), 25-­-49. Available online at: http://www.forlingua.com/downloads/Royce1999JASFLOccasionalPaper sNo.1.pdf.

Self-­-assessment task

After you have completed the reading task above, complete the self-­-assessment questions that follow.

1. What is ‘intersemiotic complementarity'?

2. What are the relations in ideational intersemiotic complementarity?

3. What are the relations in interpersonal intersemiotic complementarity?

4. What are the relations in textual intersemiotic complementarity?

5. How does Royce define a ‘multimodal text'?

6. What does he mean by ‘cohesion'? What is his source?

7. In Table 1, in the ideational metafunction, what are the:

• verbal meanings?

• visual meanings?

• elements of intersemiotic complementarity?

8. How is the WMI text multimodal?

9. Define the following terms:

• repetition
• synonymy
• antonymy
• meronymy
• hyponomy
• collocation.

10. What visual represented participants does Royce identify?

11. What visual activity does Royce identify?

12. What visual circumstances does Royce identify?

13. What intersemiotic complementarity relations are identified? (Note, in the table, C = collocation; M = meronymy; R = repetitions; and so on)

Reading task

Read: Derewianka, B., & Coffin, C. (2008). Time visuals in history textbooks: Some pedagogic issues. In L. Unsworth (Ed.), Multimodal semiotics: Functional analysis in contexts of education (pp. 187-­-200). London and New York: Continuum.

Self-­-assessment task

After you have completed the reading task above, complete the self-­-assessment questions that follow.

1. What visual resources are commonly found in history textbooks?

2. When was the Roman invasion of Britain?

3. What 5 categories of time function in history books did the authors identify?

4. What are the ‘most natural' linguistic resources for sequencing?

5. What other linguistic resources are typically used for sequencing in history textbooks?

6. What graphic (visual-­-verbal) resource is typically used to represent sequence in time in history textbooks? How does this resource vary in different textbooks?

7. What is segmenting?

8. What verbal and visual resources are used to represent segmenting in history textbooks?

9. What is setting?

10. What verbal and visual resources are used to represent setting in history textbooks?

11. What verbal and visual resources are used to represent duration in history textbooks?

12. What is phasing?

13. What verbal and visual resources are used to represent phasing in history textbooks?

14. Of the semantic possibilities for representing time discussed by the authors, which two are most commonly found in history textbooks? Why do you think the other resources are rarely found?

15. What visual-­-verbal devices are used to indicate causality in the timeline shown in Figure 12.1, and the diagram in Figure 12.4?