Multimodal Texts and Remediation

The first thing that should be mentioned this week is the difference between a medium and a mode.

Mode = means of communication
Medium = the means through which it is communicated

5 modes include - gestural, audio, spatial, linguistic and visual ("Multimodal Literacy").

One of the focuses of this week is multimodal texts. A text is multimodal when it uses more than one mode. For example, dance uses spatial, visual, gestural and sometimes audio.

Another of the focuses for this week is remediation. This means moving a work from medium to another. For example, a written story could be changed to one consisting wholly of images. This is an example of a straightforward representation, a type of remediation without irony or critique - just a representation of the work ("Multimodal Literacy").

For example, the start of my story has a young child who is lonely and sad because her mother won't let her interact with other children. She is hidden from the outside world. To depict this I chose this image of a sad looking child.



This photograph was uploaded to the site Pexels by Mateus Bertelli.

This remediation also altered the mode from the linguistic form of writing to the visual form of images. The effects that this has on the audience also changes. The emotion can be conveyed through writing but many people are more affected by the emotional impact of images. However, this also serves to shorten the story and it loses some of its original meaning. Because it is now in images, it is up to the viewer to interpret what the story tells. Everyone who reads it will have a different interpretation so a different version will exist in each viewer's mind. Words achieve a greater accuracy than pictures.

Straightforward representation isn't the only form of remediation. There is also enhancement, which seeks to pay homage to the original work while also improving it. Transformation refashions the work while maintaining the original feel or 'vibe' of it ("Multimodal Literacy").

Thanks for reading this week's blog entry!

Works Cited:


"Multimodal Literacy". Education.Vic.Gov.Au, 2020, https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/multimodal.