CONTENTS
List of figures x
1 The futures of literacy: modes, logics and affordances 1
Affordances of mode and facilities of media 5
Right now, an objection 7
2 Preface 9
3 Going into a different world 16
Into new contexts for writing 16
The new environment of writing 19
Writing and literacy 21
Literacy 23
A next step: the alphabet 25
Transcription systems 28
Language, speech, writing 31
4 Literacy and multimodality: a theoretical framework 35
A need for new thinking 35
A ‘toolkit’ 37
The ‘decline of writing’ and cultural pessimism: means for conducting
a debate
51
Modes and fitness for purpose 51
Modes and the shaping of knowledge 53
Mode and epistemological commitment 55
Mode and causality 55
Mode and conceptual-cognitive complexity 57
Mode, imagination and design 59
5 What is literacy?: resources of the mode of writing 60
‘Writing’ or ‘literacy’? 60
Writing as transcription 63
Writing in the age of the screen: aspects of visual grammar 64
So what is writing? 71
Two examples of ‘transformation’ 73
Sentence, texts and the social environment 77
6 A social theory of text: genre 83
Genre in theorising about literacy: some introductory remarks 83
The genre debates 88
What, then, is genre? What does it look like? 91
Genre as sequence: temporality 92
7 Multimodality, multimedia and genre 105
A multimodal view of genre 105
Meanings of genres in multimodal texts 110
Genre as design: text and the new media 115
Genre labels 118
Genre and educational strategies 119
8 Meaning and frames: punctuations of semiosis 121
Punctuation as a means for making meaning 121
Text as the domain of punctuation 122
Some examples 124
Speech and writing 124
One further example of the speech–writing relation 133
Dynamic interrelations of framing systems 134
Trading between semiotic systems 134
Framing in multimodal texts: writing and image 135
9 Reading as semiosis: interpreting the world and ordering the
world
139
viii
From telling the world to showing the world 139
Reading as sign-making 142
From telling the world to showing the world 139
Reading as sign-making 142
The world as told: reading as interpretation 149
The world as shown: reading as design 151
Choosing how to read: reading paths 156
Reading as establishing and imposing criteria of relevance 160
Reading paths and access to knowledge 163
Shifts in power: (re)producers of multimodal texts 164
The future of reading in the multimodal landscape of the ‘West’ 166
10 Some items for an agenda of further thinking 168
Requisite theories of meaning 168
Imagination 170
Modes, bodies and dispositions 171
Authorship, authority and knowledge 173
‘Standards’ and their decline 174
Bibliography 177
Index 181
ix
FIGURES
4.1 ‘This is a car’ 43
4.2 No smoking sign 52
4.3 ‘Diary’: a day in the life of a red blood cell 54
4.4 Concept map 1: blood circulation 56
4.5 Concept map 2: blood circulation 56
5.1 Child’s drawing: ‘cookery book’ 61
5.2 The eye: biology in the secondary school 66
5.3 Quadrant of spatial meaning potential in ‘Western’ images 69
5.4 Lugard Road: road sign, Hong Kong 71
5.5 Sign on a walking trail, The Peak, Hong Kong 71
5.6 Distance post: The Peak, Hong Kong 71
5.7 The concept of ‘sentence’: a seventeenth-century religious tract 80
6.1 ‘Annapelle’: a multimodal promotional message 102
7.1 Student drawing of a plant cell 1: ‘like a brick wall’ 108
7.2 Student drawing of a plant cell 2: the lens of the microscope 112
8.1 Writing in the private and the public domain: the notion of the sentence
once more
133
8.2 Page or screen: Institute of Education website 136
8.3 Multimodal compositions: CD-ROM 138
9.1 ‘Early’ child writing: ‘look, I’ve done it’ 143
9.2 ‘Early’ child writing in an alphabetic writing culture 145
9.3 ‘Early’ child writing in a pictographic writing culture 146
9.4 Drawing and writing: ‘frogs born’ 148
9.5 Horoscope 150
9.6 ‘Our visit to the British Museum’ (with thanks to Eve Bearn) 153
9.7 Page from a science textbook 155
9.8 ‘Early’ child writing: linearity and directionality 158
9.9 New forms of text: video-game magazine 161
CONTENTS
List of figures x
1 The futures of literacy: modes, logics and affordances 1
Affordances of mode and facilities of media 5
Right now, an objection 7
2 Preface 9
3 Going into a different world 16
Into new contexts for writing 16
The new environment of writing 19
Writing and literacy 21
Literacy 23
A next step: the alphabet 25
Transcription systems 28
Language, speech, writing 31
4 Literacy and multimodality: a theoretical framework 35
A need for new thinking 35
A ‘toolkit’ 37
The ‘decline of writing’ and cultural pessimism: means for conducting
a debate
51
Modes and fitness for purpose 51
Modes and the shaping of knowledge 53
Mode and epistemological commitment 55
Mode and causality 55
Mode and conceptual-cognitive complexity 57
Mode, imagination and design 59
5 What is literacy?: resources of the mode of writing 60
‘Writing’ or ‘literacy’? 60
Writing as transcription 63
Writing in the age of the screen: aspects of visual grammar 64
So what is writing? 71
Two examples of ‘transformation’ 73
Sentence, texts and the social environment 77
6 A social theory of text: genre 83
Genre in theorising about literacy: some introductory remarks 83
The genre debates 88
What, then, is genre? What does it look like? 91
Genre as sequence: temporality 92
7 Multimodality, multimedia and genre 105
A multimodal view of genre 105
Meanings of genres in multimodal texts 110
Genre as design: text and the new media 115
Genre labels 118
Genre and educational strategies 119
8 Meaning and frames: punctuations of semiosis 121
Punctuation as a means for making meaning 121
Text as the domain of punctuation 122
Some examples 124
Speech and writing 124
One further example of the speech–writing relation 133
Dynamic interrelations of framing systems 134
Trading between semiotic systems 134
Framing in multimodal texts: writing and image 135
9 Reading as semiosis: interpreting the world and ordering the
world
139
viii
From telling the world to showing the world 139
Reading as sign-making 142
From telling the world to showing the world 139
Reading as sign-making 142
The world as told: reading as interpretation 149
The world as shown: reading as design 151
Choosing how to read: reading paths 156
Reading as establishing and imposing criteria of relevance 160
Reading paths and access to knowledge 163
Shifts in power: (re)producers of multimodal texts 164
The future of reading in the multimodal landscape of the ‘West’ 166
10 Some items for an agenda of further thinking 168
Requisite theories of meaning 168
Imagination 170
Modes, bodies and dispositions 171
Authorship, authority and knowledge 173
‘Standards’ and their decline 174
Bibliography 177
Index 181
ix
FIGURES
4.1 ‘This is a car’ 43
4.2 No smoking sign 52
4.3 ‘Diary’: a day in the life of a red blood cell 54
4.4 Concept map 1: blood circulation 56
4.5 Concept map 2: blood circulation 56
5.1 Child’s drawing: ‘cookery book’ 61
5.2 The eye: biology in the secondary school 66
5.3 Quadrant of spatial meaning potential in ‘Western’ images 69
5.4 Lugard Road: road sign, Hong Kong 71
5.5 Sign on a walking trail, The Peak, Hong Kong 71
5.6 Distance post: The Peak, Hong Kong 71
5.7 The concept of ‘sentence’: a seventeenth-century religious tract 80
6.1 ‘Annapelle’: a multimodal promotional message 102
7.1 Student drawing of a plant cell 1: ‘like a brick wall’ 108
7.2 Student drawing of a plant cell 2: the lens of the microscope 112
8.1 Writing in the private and the public domain: the notion of the sentence
once more
133
8.2 Page or screen: Institute of Education website 136
8.3 Multimodal compositions: CD-ROM 138
9.1 ‘Early’ child writing: ‘look, I’ve done it’ 143
9.2 ‘Early’ child writing in an alphabetic writing culture 145
9.3 ‘Early’ child writing in a pictographic writing culture 146
9.4 Drawing and writing: ‘frogs born’ 148
9.5 Horoscope 150
9.6 ‘Our visit to the British Museum’ (with thanks to Eve Bearn) 153
9.7 Page from a science textbook 155
9.8 ‘Early’ child writing: linearity and directionality 158
9.9 New forms of text: video-game magazine 161
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