Page 62 - Literacy in the New Media Age

LITERACY AND MULTIMODALITY 51

has therefore deep epistemological effects. The scientific entity blood circulation
has a different ontological ‘shape’ represented in writing through the genre of
diary, say, than represented in the spatial display of a concept map. The one is
about movement in time from significant episode to significant episode; the
other is about (in one such map that I have before me) relations of centrality and
marginality of concepts. Other modal effects have to do with factuality or non-
factuality, with different forms of realism and naturalism, that is, they have
effects on judgements about the ‘truth’ of a text. Modality in that sense is an
issue that is very closely connected to modal choice, to design decisions, to the
constructions of reading paths.

The ‘decline of writing’ and cultural pessimism: means for
conducting a debate
Writing is such a potent metaphor for culture in general, that the move in the
current landscape of communication from the dominance of writing to the
dominance of image in many domains has given rise, understandably, to much
anguish, soul-searching and deeply pessimistic predictions about the future
welfare of civilisation. The approach through multimodality offers one means for
conducting a debate about what is a deeply significant issue. The concept of
affordance gives us the means to ask about the potentials and limitations of the
different modes, and at least to begin to examine what might be real or potential
losses, and what might be real gains in this move, and in what areas they might
occur. This might allow us – cultural pessimists or not – to say, ‘these are things
which we ought not to give up, and for these reasons’. This book is not the place
to conduct this debate in any extended fashion, but it can be the place for starting
it in a way that goes beyond mere polemic, and might suggest the framework
within which a productive argument might be conducted around this question.

Modes and fitness for purpose

Let me start with a simple example. I have here a no-smoking sign, from a coffee
bar that a colleague and I visit frequently (Figure 4.2 overleaf). On the one side
is the image with the caption, and on the other side is the detail of the smoking
policy of the institution in which the coffee bar is located. The sign is placed on
each table, in a hard plastic stand, so that both sides are visible. We might ask the
question of gains and losses, of modes suited and not suited to specific tasks.
What is quite clear is that while the two sides are both instructions or rules not to
smoke, the two sides actually do quite different things. The image is clear and
unambiguous: it says, ‘do not smoke’. The other, the institution’s ‘smoking
policy’, is much more hedged, and even after several readings it is just about
impossible to know when you can or cannot smoke.
It is clear that image would be extremely bad for communicating the detail of
the written version; and it seems equally clear that the written version is just