Multimodal Analysis: An Integrative Approach for Scientific Visualizing on the Web

Abstract

The Multimodal approach offers technical communicators and science writers an analytical tool to synthesize the meaning made in the connections across communicative modes. This multimodal synthesis can help technical communicators better exploit the meaning-making potential of multimodal combinations and understand the needs of future generations shaped by their increasingly developed multimodal literacy.

Representational Classroom Practices that Contribute to Students’ Conceptual and Representational Understanding of Chemical Bonding

“…Using the level descriptors shown in Table 1, a score that indicated the overall level of representational competence was assigned to each text. More fine-grained analyses were undertaken using an adaptation of the approaches described by Unsworth (2006aUnsworth ( , 2006bUnsworth ( , 2008 and by Maier, Kampf, and Kastberg (2007) to code the ways that students explained their data in terms of underlying sub-microscopic-level phenomena and processes using written and non-written representations together in multimodal text.…”

The conflation of health and beauty in advertising: A critical multimodal discourse analysis of three television commercials

“…Mulitmodal analysis has been frequently applied to still image texts such as magazine ads (Machin &Thomborrow, 2003), websites (Maier et al, 2007), political campaign posters (Teo, 2004), and so on. However the analytical approach for multimodal texts comprised o f moving images is still being negotiated by MDA practitioners.…”

“…In order to investigate how the relationship between health and beauty is constructed, I will deploy multimodal analysis (Kress & van Leeuwen 2006;Machin, 2007;Jewitt, 2009), inter-mode analysis (van Leeuwen, 2005;Maier et al, 2007), Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (Halliday 2003;Eggins, 2004) and a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach (Fairclough, 1989;Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999;Wodak, 2006).…”

“…A great deal of the analysis described by Kress & van Leeuwen (2006), and Machin (2007) focuses on still images such as poster advertisements. Since this study seeks to investigate commercials, which are moving images, I will also be drawing on works that have analyzed advertisements (Bell and Millie, 2002;Harrison, 2008), commercials (Nina-Pazarzi & Tsangaris, 2008), and the moving image (Maier et al, 2007;Maier 2009). Additionally, in keeping with the tenets of CDA I will therefore employ a critical multimodal discourse analysis (CMDA).…”

“…It is only in combination with other elements that meaning is realized. It has been suggested in vanLeeuwen (2005) andMaier et al (2007) that the verbal mode and the visual mode should be considered as working in tandem, with mode either extending or elaborating on the meaning o f the other mode. Independently, each mode can be seen as only having a 'meaning potential', however analyzed as a cooperative unit their meanings can be better understood.My analysis will firstly investigate the commercials frame by frame, looking strictly at the multimodal elements o f the visual mode, and then the inter-mode relationship with the verbal mode corresponding with that particular frame (this is illustrated in Appendices A, B, and C in form o f a chart)8.…”