Multimodal Discourse [Paperback]

Multimodal Discourseoutlines a new theory of communication for the age of interactive multimedia. Kress and Van Leeuwen show how two kinds of thought processes interact in the design and production of communicative messages: design thinking and production thinking, the kind of thinking which occurs in direct interaction with the materials and media used. This book will be a key text in courses of language, media and communication willing to take on the theoretical challenges posed by multimodality, mulitmedia and multi-skilling, and it provides inspiring theoretical input for courses in interactive multimedia design. Multimodal Discourseis the theoretical browser we need to navigate the exuberant multimodality of the highly mediated world in which we live. For students and specialists in communication or semiotics, cultural studies or linguistics, graphic design or anthropology this is the foundational theory of how meaning is made in this period of increasing semiotic fragmentation and cross-over. --Ron Scollon, Professor of Linguistics, Georgetown University