Page 46 - Literacy in the New Media Age

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LITERACY AND MULTIMODALITY
A theoretical framework

A need for new thinking

The changes in the conditions surrounding literacy are such that we need to
reconsider the theory which has, explicitly or implicitly, underpinned
conceptions of writing over the last five or six decades. I have already said,
insistently, that the major change is that we can no longer treat literacy (or
‘language’) as the sole, the main, let alone the major means for representation
and communication. Other modes are there as well, and in many environments
where writing occurs these other modes may be more prominent and more
significant. As a consequence, a linguistic theory cannot provide a full account
of what literacy does or is; language alone cannot give us access to the meaning
of the multimodally constituted message; language and literacy now have to be
seen as partial bearers of meaning only. The co-presence of other modes raises
the question of their function: are they merely replicating what language does,
are they ancillary, marginal, or do they play a full role, and if they do, is it the
same role as that of writing or a different role? And if they play a different role,
is that because of their constitution, their make-up, because of their affordances?
But if that were the case, we would need to ask whether language – as speech or
as writing – has its special potentials and its limitations, its own affordances. That
is a new question to ask of language and of literacy.
There is a consequence for notions of meaning: if the meaning of a message is
realised, ‘spread across’, several modes, we need to know on what basis this
spreading happens, what principles are at work. Equally, in reading, we need now
to gather meaning from all the modes which are co-present in a text, and new
principles of reading will be at work. Making meaning in writing and making
meaning in reading both have to be newly thought about.
Here I will outline some elements of such a theory of literacy; it cannot be
complete, but it may provide some useful tools. This theory, as I said, cannot be
a linguistic theory. The modes which occur, together with the language-modes of
speech and writing, on pages or screens, are constituted on different principles to
those of language; their materiality is different; and the work that cultures have