22/08, 23/08 - Multimodality Jargon and Saving Ideas from being Stolen

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The History of Multimodality：How people communicate and gain knowledge – Mingshu Yang


This week began with a reiteration of multimodality. We were required to choose a multimodal text and analyse how its multimodality adds to the message it hopes to convey. I decided to use two multimodal texts - an advertisement for  StayUncle and a meme about a Kpop band, Stray Kids. 


I chose to analyse this advertisement because of the social relevance and inclusivity it portrayed. It was also interesting in terms of its multimodality - the advertisement featured only a simple blurred background and a caption, but the details made its message of it very clear and powerful. The company's subtle approach to this topic is perfectly done. 

I was particularly struck by how much the visual and spatial elements of the advertisement added to the linguistic facet of it. The gestures in the image were also detrimental to getting the point of the advertisement across. The multimodality in the text, hence, makes it more effective than a simple linguistic write-up.  


                                                                               

The next multimodal text I used was a meme. Not a very academic choice, but in my defence, memes are a very under-discussed part of multimodal creation. The entire premise of what comprises a meme is based on multimodality. The humour in a meme comes from the visual, aural, spatial and gestural elements as opposed to just the linguistic part. 

The meme here used the visual factor particularly well. I chose it because I was intrigued by the infinity mirror the camera work did in the back. It caused an interesting duality - the subject in the image is both the person the meme is about and the person who made the meme. This added to the humour of the meme and made it even more interesting. 




This activity drove the week's first class. We discussed technical terms in multimodality. We recapped the five important 'modes' of multimodality - visual, aural, spatial, gestural and linguistic.  We also learned the other important terms to keep in mind while analysing multimodal texts - the media used and the author, for example. Nikhil sir also mentioned resemiotisation and inter-semiotic awareness. 

The next class introduced the procedure connected to protecting the integrity of ideas while making sure that they are out there for public discourse. Nikhil sir took us through the legal side of academic writing with copyrights, public domain and creative commons. Copyrights protect intellectual property so that no one can simply steal another person's hard work and claim the credit. But copyrights can be restricting,  and in the real-world scenario, copyrights often prevent the free flow of information of ideas. This is why public domains and creative commons attributions are becoming increasingly common. These allow the dissemination of knowledge that would otherwise be hidden away behind paywalls. Creative commons was something I am very interested in learning about because it does not restrict education, but it also makes sure that the original creators of the content receive due credit. It is the perfect combination of the pros of public domains and copyrights. I especially loved making my very own creative commons license for my argumentative essay. 

Creative Commons - Open Access - Library Guides at UW-La Crosse -



Next week: Converting the physical poster we made into a digital, multimodal poster. 

 

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