Sumit's Blog

In the book "Multimodal Discourse the modes and media of contemporary communication", Kress and Van Leeuwen introduces the "multimodality concept”. The term "Multimodality" means the use of various modes such as language, image, text, sound, music, and sign to create a semiotic product.

In this book the authors explore the principles behind multimodal communication and suggest that common semiotic principles operate in and across different modes. By this they mean, it is possible to encode action through music and emotions through images.

The authors question the issue of meaning in their framework. Meaning, according to the authors has traditionally been something with a static, singular mode of representation. To design an answer to the question of meaning, four critical concepts are introduced which the authors call "strata". They are discourse, design, production, and distribution. It is to be noted that the authors do not give any particular hierarchical order for their strata.


Discourse: Discourse is the first of the four strata defined by Kress and Van Leeuwen. "Discourses are socially built networks of ideas developed or produced in specific social context and are appropriate to the interest of social actors in these contexts”. To illustrate their argument they give an example of "ethnic conflict" discourse of war. This particular discourse could be used to discuss warfare but also could be used in a variety of other context such as airport thrillers or in movies set in Africa.

Design: Kress and Van Leeuwen states that,” Design stands midway between content and expression”. By this the authors mean that design serves as a cognitive process for creation. It is where ideas are formed. The authors also say that designs are completely different from productions. To illustrate this, they give an example of architectural projects which are never built. They remain on paper, in the mind or on the hard disk.

Production: "Production' refers to the organisation of the expression, to the actual material articulation of the semiotic event or the actual material production of the semiotic artefact". Here again, the authors differentiate design and production with an example of improvising music. They say that composers design the music and performers execute it. According to the author this is the critical difference between design and production. Design, which is the process before performing and production which involves the actual expression of the design practice.

Distribution: The authors explain the distribution strata through music. They state that "musical performers may need the technicians who record the music on tape and disc for preservation and distribution". Even though the authors mention that they don't put any of their stata's one before another, we can say that discourse, design and production would always come before the distribution strata.


The article concludes with an example of Stephanie's bedroom as a multimodal text to demonstrate the strata's. The authors in this example suggest that for the bedroom to be a final product, meanings needs to be realised by spatial arrangement. It needs to be conceptualised and designed before it could be produced.