Working with Multimodality: Rethinking Literacy in a Digital Age

In today's digital world, we have multiple modes of meaning-making: sounds, images, hypertexts. Yet, within literacy education, even 'new' literacies, we know relatively little about how to work with and produce modally complex texts. In Doing Multimodality, Jennifer Rowsell focuses on eight modes: words, images, sounds, movement, animation, hypertext, design and modal learning. Throughout the book each mode is illustrated by cases studies based on the author's interviews with twenty people, who have extensive experience working with a mode in their field. From a song writer to a famous photographer, these people all discuss what it means to do multimodality well. This accessible textbook brings the multiple modes together into an integrated theory of multimodality. Step-by-step, beginning with theory then exploring modes and how to work with them, before concluding with how to apply this in an investigation, each stage of working with multimodality is covered. Doing Multimodality will help students to: Think about specific modes and how they function Consider the implications for multimodal meaning-making Become familiar with conventions and folk knowledge about given modes Apply this same knowledge to their own production of media texts in classrooms Assuming no prior knowledge about multimodality and its properties, Doing Multimodality is designed to appeal to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in how learning and innovation is different in a digital and media age and is an essential textbook for courses in literacy, new media and multimodality within applied linguistics , education and communication studies.