Developing Writers by Andrews Richard. Smith Anna

Author:Andrews, Richard.,Smith, Anna.
Language: eng
Format: epub

P1: OTA/XYZ

P2: ABC

MHBK033-c07

MHBK033-Andrews

April 1, 2011

2:17

Printer Name: Yet to Come

WRITING WITHIN MULTIMODALITY

105

In what is avowedly ‘ not a book about the development of writing’

(Kress 1997: xvii) Before Writing sets out its stall early on: it is a book about meaning-making, about form as meaning rather than as formalism, about composition as design. ‘Above all, this book tries to look freshly at children’s engagement with print by treating this as just one of a plethora of ways in which they make meaning before they come to school’ (p. xix).

From such a perspective, we would not see writing as the central mode of communication in schooling (see the discussion earlier in the present chapter and in the previous one) but as one among several. It is a sign system, a particular sub-branch of the ‘study of the meaning of systems of signs’ (p. 6) – semiotics. So, in pre-school as well as in the early years of schooling (and beyond), writing sits alongside other modes of meaning-making.

The relationship between writing and other modes varies according to purpose and intention, but also according to the preference of the reader.

Let us take writing and the still image, in all its forms. In some cases, writing is foregrounded and the image – say an illustration in a children’s book – remains literally illustrative of something in the verbal written text. In a recipe book, too, the writing is crucial (the photographs, on the whole, do not tell you the steps you have to take to make the dish) and is illustrated by accompanying photographs. But even if the intention and purpose of the composer of the book is to foreground the writing, it may be the case that the reader operates by giving attention first to the images, and only then to the written verbal text. The images can stand on their own, and as a way into the text.

In other cases, the image may be foregounded and the written text is supplementary. An example would be a catalogue (of art, of shopping) where both the intention and the attention are given first to the images, and then to the accompanying verbal text which acts to give more information, sometimes of an explanatory nature, and which cannot be given by the image itself.

Thirdly, there are the interesting cases where neither written text nor image is in the ascendancy, but they both sit alongside each other in a complementary fashion or in tension. In such cases, the reader’s attention moves as they wish it, back and forth between the two modes, making connections, looking for points of comparison. This is a highly productive state of attention in which the mind is asked to shift between the two modes, and thus must gain meta-modal perspective on the kinds of communication that are taking place. Kress’s argument in Before Writing is that the child draws on their range of meaning-making practices in a range of modes in order to make sense of the written system. The social semiotic theory ‘insists that all signs and messages are always multimodal.

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