Modality. Commitment, Truth Value and Reality Claims Across Modes in Multimodal Novels

Abstract

Since its first major flourishing in the 1960s, stylistics has developed into a broad and robust field of research, focusing, initially, on the way meaning is created through language in literature, and later also on linguistic meaning-making in other types of texts. Over the years, the field has branched out into a number of specialised sub-fields which have been inspired and informed by different trends in modern linguistics: functionalist stylistics, pragmatic stylistics, cognitive stylistics and corpus stylistics, to name a few. Other branches like feminist stylistics and critical stylistics devote their attention more to contextual matters such as the linguistic manifestation of gender relations, power structures and ideology in text. Central to all these branches of stylistics are the focus on how meaning is created by linguistic means and the consequent attempt to conduct systematic, informed and consistent linguistic analyses of the texts put up for scrutiny.In the self-image of stylistics, a popular metaphor often employed is that of the stylistic tool box, or tool kit, consisting of linguistic terms, concepts and methodologies ready to be employed for stylistic analysis. Along with developments in modern linguistics and the consequent budding of new stylistic sub-branches, the tool kit has been extended with tools pertaining to these new linguistic and stylistic paradigms. While the stylistic tool kit thus contains a wide variety of descriptive and analytical tools available to those who wish to anchor their textual analysis solidly in the actual wording of the text, the tool kit is rather poorly equipped when it comes to handling texts which -in addition to wording -make use of other semiotic modes for their meaning-making. Because stylisticians have overwhelmingly looked to linguistics for their concepts, and because linguistics has been methodologically quite weak at handling multimodal texts, stylistics has inevitably, following suit, been equally weak. Multimodal stylistics is a very recent development in stylistics which addresses exactly this problem. By bringing together literary studies, linguistics and multimodal semiotics, multimodal stylisticians wish to develop a framework for the analysis of modes like typography, layout, colour and visual im-

34. Non-verbal Semiotic Modes and Media in the Multimodal Novel

“…That Brought to you by | Stockholms Universitet Authenticated Download Date | 7/27/15 6:57 PM forces us urgently to develop precise tools requisite for the description and analysis of texts and semiotic entities of contemporary communication." Bucher 2011, 131;Nørgaard 2010b), the vast majority of modes, particularly in the context of hermeneutic approaches, can be seen as textual or medial (generic) entities. This applies to both, single successful and efficient (multimodal) acts of communication, as, e.g.…”

“…Hallet 2009aHallet , 2011aHallet , 2011bGibbons 2010a, 99;Gibbons 2010b, 287;Nørgaard 2010b). The integration of different types of symbolization and semiotic forms leads to a multisemiotic, more comprehensive, at times also more authentic representation of the fictional world that tries to imitate or resembles the multifarious ways in which the non-fictional reality is perceived by the reader and in which knowledge and experiences are represented and communicated in the reader's lifeworld.…”

Post-Postmodernist Fiction and the Rise of Digital Epitexts

“…Exemplary of this current metamedial interest are multimodal novels such as A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000) by Dave Eggers, House of Leaves (2000) by Mark Z. Danielewski, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005) by Jonathan Safran Foer, Austerlitz (2001) by W. G. Sebald, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003) by Mark Haddon, The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet (2009) by Rief Larsen, The Autograph Man (2002) by Zadie Smith, and Nox (2010) by Anne Carson (see also Gibbons 2012;Hallet 2009;Nørgaard 2010). Like genre blurring, the technique of word-image combinations is not new.…”