Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication (Hodder Arnold Publication) - Softcover

Kress, Gunther; Van Leeuwen, Professor Theo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0340608773 ISBN 13: 9780340608777

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2001

Synopsis

Multimodal Discourse Multimodal Discourse outlines a new theory of communication for the age of interactive media. Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen provide students with a wide-ranging analysis of the various communication styles and the ways by which text is now understood as the interaction of sound, music, vision, colour and language. Full description

About this title

Review

`Multimodal Discourse is the theoretical browser we need to navigate the exuberant multimodality of the highly mediated owrld in which we live. For students and specialists in communication or semiotics, cultural studies or linguistics, graphic design or anthropology this is the foundationla theory of how meaning is made in this period of increasing semiotic fragmentation and cross-over.' --(Ron Scollon, Professor of Linguistics, Georgetown )

Synopsis

"Multimodal Discourse" outlines a theory of communication for the age of interactive multimedia and multi-skilling. Just as the demarcation lines between specialised jobs are blurring in contemporary society, so are the demarcation lines between modes and media of communication. This requires a new way of thinking - it requires a practice in which designers can freely move between different modes and media, and a theory whose concepts and ideas can do the same. Drawing on a wide range of examples, Kress and Van Leeuwen sketch an approach to the idea of discourse in which colour plays a role equal to language, and show how two kinds of thought processes interact in the design and production of communicative messages, 'design thinking' and 'production thinking', the kind of thinking which occurs in direct interaction with the materials and media used. Above all the authors stress communicative practice and interactivity. Their question, throughout, is: how do people use communicative modes and media in actual, concrete, interactive instances of communicative practice?

The book is a key text in courses of language, media and communication willing to take on the theoretical challenges posed by multimodality, multimedia and multi-skilling, and it provides inspiring theoretical input for courses in interactive multimedia design.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0340608773
• ISBN 13: 9780340608777
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160