Kairos 17.1: Lauer, What's in a Name?

Precise

Introduction
"What I mean by multimodal"

Cynthia Selfe (2:15)

What I mean by multimodal (2007)

Within those environments, those digital environments, I do like to think of the work that I do and that the students in my classes do as composing, and multimodal composing, because I want to provide them, or I want them to take advantage of and deploy all available means of persuasion and communication. That is, I want them to be able to deploy alphabetic resources, I want them to be able to deploy moving images and video resources, audio resources, animation images and also still images. And those I consider the modalities of composing. And when I say multimodal composing, I mean some combination of those modalities. I take that word from Gunther Kress, Theo Van Leeuwen and the New London Group. So multimodal composing, to me, is what happens in a composition classroom, the creation of texts that draw on different semiotic channels to communicate.

Digital media are the means of delivery of those texts, via the computer screen, television, radio, the network.

And then I would be very willing to leave new media out of the equation entirely because I think it’s a term that is not necessarily productive for our field and it doesn’t buy me or others that I know any particular history or sense of investment in our own field. So, I think, that that one I could leave behind without any problem. I very seldom use it.
"Defining multimodal"

Gunther Kress (:35)

Defining multimodal (2010)

I would say that mode is an attempt to get away from using language always, as the metaphoric means for naming resources for representation. And the multi attempts to recognize that there are many of these resources, distinct in different ways.

So multimodality is saying the field of representation or the means for making meaning are multiple and in ways which are significant.
"Specific vs. general"

Jonathan Alexander (:48)

Specific vs. general (2007)

I find myself saying new communications technologies or electronically enabled communications technologies. To me that seems very specific. If I’m saying that I’m referring primarily to... or I’ll say Internet-based communications technologies. I try to be very specific about the technological mode through which the communication is taking place when I’m talking about those specific sorts of things. When I talk more generally about the movement of literate practice from what Gunther Kress would call print-based technologies to other things, that’s when I would use the grander, umbrella terms like multimodal or multimedia.
"Medium and modality"

Cynthia Selfe (:28)

Medium and modality (2007)

I make a distinction between medium and modality. Medium is the delivery mechanism. Modality is the semiotic channel that we use to communicate. So the medium is the computer, the television, the radio, for me, that’s how I distinguish it.
"Keeping terms separate"

Gunther Kress (1:10)

Keeping terms separate (2010)

I think new media and multimodality, for me, need to be kept absolutely separately because they do very different stuff.

So you say the media of the screen, the new media of the screen, provide the facility for the appearance of different modes. So, therefore, you need two terms to name two distinct things which come together. Just like “book” and “writing” came together and became, in a sense, substitutes one for another which still bedevils, I think, notions of literacy because in common parlance it is understood as being the kind of literate version of it. But at the moment I think its really important to keep them apart because otherwise its like a shotgun approach: there is the fly on the wall; I’m going to shoot off these thousand pellets but I’m also going to destroy that lovely porcelain vase.
"The new media"

Anne Wysocki (:29)

The new media (2010)

Given my definition in this chapter [for a technical communicator audience] that I’m talking about, you could have... you know, like a podcast would be new media because of how you access it, how it’s distributed.

So, yeah, I’m probably talking more about the new media here because I’m focusing on issues of not just production, but also circulation and distribution and consumption.

Introduction

As terms are used more frequently within a discourse community the particular attributes of a term may become more precisely identified. This happens as a result of attempting to apply a term to newly emerging technologies or situations (see "limited"), differentiating it from other, more newly introduced terms (see “relative”) and watching how a term unfolds as part of a dialectical process whereupon its definition is continually refined as it is used by one scholar after another.

Precision is an important aspect of a term’s definition, especially as that term evolves, because it helps users identify specific instances in which a term may apply and other instances in which a term may not be suitable but where other terms should be considered or developed (see “limited”). Precision exposes a carefulness of thought that allows a term’s definition to be taken seriously. More importantly, precision is what furthers the evolution of a term because only until boundaries have been drawn around a term can those boundaries be tested and challenged.

The audio segments in this section, from Jonathan Alexander, Anne Wysocki, Gunther Kress, and Cynthia Selfe, illustrate scholars’ use of precise language to define terms like medium, modality, new media and multimodality, in an effort to address the importance of differentiating between a variety of terms that do very different things.

Works Cited