“The original term of literacy was derived literatus, which originally meant a learned person” (Blake & Blake, 2002)
So, we have defined literacy as being multimodal, but now let’s try to understand what we mean by ‘Multimodal’. Multimodal literacy is an expansion of the reading and writing literacies and including the new, which is the growing technology that is on offer to us. Multimodal defined in the Australian Curriculum as the strategic use of ‘two or more modes’ to make meaning, for example images, gestures, music, spoken language, and written language. To give you a better understanding; watching movies, music videos, reading signs and posters, these are all multimodal, using more than one way to communicate and mark meaning. Development of multimodal literacy knowledge and skills, will enable students to effectively design and communicate meaning through rich and complex texts, and as future teachers, we need to extend our students’ as well as our own multimodal literacy knowledge and skills. We use Twitter, blogging tools and facebook almost everyday to communicate with our circle of friends, family and colleagues; posting images, sharing videos, sending messages. These are some ways we use our, multimodal skills; we are ‘Produsing’ and ‘Consuming’ literacies.
The NATURE of Multimodality. There are six different modes of meaning, we combine these different modes to make meaning to represent our perspectives and interpret meaning. In other words, we use these modes everyday to transfer and receive knowledge.
– Oral Meaning -Visual Meaning
-Written Meaning -Spatial Meaning
-Tactile Meaning -Gestural Meaning
Design elements of multimodalty are:
Reference: Who and what do the meanings refer to? How they are represented? Is it by using visuals, audio, space and gesture? Composition: How are the meanings held together?
Purpose: For whom are the meanings constructed?
Interaction: The meanings connect who and what together and how?
Context: Where and when are the meanings situated?
What do all these mean?
Well to become a proficient produser and consumer of literacies, we blend these modes and use the design elements to construct and present knowledge and meaning in effective ways, so that the consumers can interpret and understand the meaning of the produser.
There is another form of multimodal, and it is called synaesthesia. Synaesthesia is a rare and unusual phenomenon of the complete union of sensors or often described as ‘mixing of the senses’
What is Synaesthesia? And how does it come into Multimodal literacy?
Synaesthesia is the complete union of sensors, in other words mixing of the senses. How one perceives certain letters and numbers, using one mode to another to express meaning. Defined as complete union of the sensors. (Kalantzis & Cope, 2012)
For many students, they may not realise they are using a variety of these modes all at the same time, and it is important for us preservice teachers to develop an understanding of multi-literacies so that we can incorporate it to the way we teach and ensure that the students use all their literacy skills and apply their knowledge in the class.
As I understand and read the context of Kalantzis and Cope (2012), Multimodal literacy is about expanding beyond reading and writing, including the new and digital media literacies because it is everything we do in everyday life. I just didn’t know there was a term for it.
In a nutshell to represent ourselves and find ourselves into this world, we need to adapt multimodal literacy because all communication and representation is MULTIMODAL.
Here is an example using multimodal to make-meaning. A short clip of the movie UP, a Disney animation film.
Literacy 