The book takes differences in multimodality research as a starting point to discuss old and new theoretical, methodological as well as analytical ideas for building bridges between various disciplines and approaches.

This book is a first attempt to map the broad context of performance studies from a multimodal perspective. It collects original research on traditional performing arts (theatre, dance, opera), live (durational performance) and mediated/recorded performances (films, television shows), as well as performative discursive practices on social media by adopting several theories and methodologies all dealing with the notion of multimodality. As a mostly dynamic and also interactive environment for various text types and genres, the context of performance studies provides many opportunities to produce meaning verbally and non-verbally. All chapters in this book develop frameworks for the analysis of performance-related events and activities and explore empirical case studies in a range of different ages and cultures. A further focus lies on the communicative strategies deployed by different communities of practice, taking into account processes of production, distribution, and consumption of such texts in diverse spatial and temporal contexts.

This book develops a new framework for describing the structure of multimodal documents: how language, image, layout and other modes of communication work together to convey meaning. Building on recent research in multimodal analysis, functional linguistics and information design, the book examines the textual, visual, and spatial aspects of page-based multimodal documents and employs an analytical model to describe and interpret their structure using the concepts of semiotic modes, medium and genre. To demonstrate and test this approach, the study performs a systematic, longitudinal analysis of a corpus of multimodal documents within a single genre: an extensively annotated corpus of tourist brochures produced between 1967-2008. The book provides multimodal discourse analysts with methodological tools to draw empirically-based conclusions about multimodal documents, and will be a valuable resource for researchers planning to develop and study multimodal corpora.

Multimodality is one of the most popular and influential semiotic theories for analysing media. However, the application and conceptual anchoring of multimodality often remains geographically and disciplinarily grounded within local systems of thought. New Studies in Multimodality combines the expertise of multimodalists from around the globe, offering novel readings and applications of central concepts in multimodality and inviting innovative synergies between previously disparate schools. Combining perspectives from the most actively developing traditions of theory and research, this book progresses from classic concepts to more empirically and practice-motivated contributions. Contributors engage in mutual dialogue to present new theoretical perspectives and compelling applications to a variety of old and new media. Expanding the basis and scope of multimodality, this volume shows awareness and experience of this field in many disciplines and illustrates how versatile, pervasive and relevant it is for studying today's communication phenomena.

Multimodality’s popularity as a semiotic approach has not resulted in a common voice yet. Its conceptual anchoring as well as its empirical applications often remain localized and disparate, and ideas of a theory of multimodality are heterogeneous and uncoordinated. For the field to move ahead, it must achieve a more mature status of reflection, mutual support, and interaction with regard to both past and future directions. The red thread across the disciplines reflected in this book is a common goal of capturing the mechanisms of synergetic knowledge construction and transmission using diverse forms of expressions, i.e., multimodality. The collection of chapters brought together in the book reflects both a diversity of disciplines and common interests and challenges, thereby establishing an excellent roadmap for the future. The contributions revisit and redefine theoretical concepts or empirical analyses, which are crucial to the study of multimodality from various perspectives, with a view towards evolving issues of multimodal analysis. With this, the book aims at repositioning the field as a well-grounded scientific discipline with significant implications for future communication research in many fields of study.

This book draws on visual data, ranging from advertisements to postage stamps to digital personal photography, to offer a complex interpretation of the different social functions realised by these texts as semiotic artefacts. Framed within the media environment of the city of Hong Kong, the study demonstrates the importance of social context to meaning making and social semiotic multimodal analysis. This book will be of interest to readers in the arts, humanities and social sciences, particularly within the fields of semiotics, visual studies, design studies, media and cultural studies, anthropology and sociology.

This textbook provides the first foundational introduction to the practice of analysing multimodality, covering the full breadth of media and situations in which multimodality needs to be a concern. Readers learn via use cases how to approach any multimodal situation and to derive their own specifically tailored sets of methods for conducting and evaluating analyses. Extensive references and critical discussion of existing approaches from many disciplines and in each of the multimodal domains addressed are provided. The authors adopt a problem-oriented perspective throughout, showing how an appropriate foundation for understanding multimodality as a phenomenon can be used to derive strong methodological guidance for analysis as well as supporting the adoption and combination of appropriate theoretical tools. Theoretical positions found in the literature are consequently always related back to the purposes of analysis rather than being promoted as valuable in their own right. By these means the book establishes the necessary theoretical foundations to engage productively with today’s increasingly complex combinations of multimodal artefacts and performances of all kinds.