Multimodal Literacies: Linking Theory, Research, and Practice

Threaded throughout this column, and the three books I review herein, is a concern for understanding the current and potential roles in literacy, learning, and life of dimensions of communication excluded from traditional conceptions of literacy education. These include visual imagery, movement, gesture, sound, embodiment, and even silence, as well as interrelations and interactions among them. The modifier most often attached to this kind of multidimensional meaning making is "multimodal," owing mainly to the influential work of Gunther Kress and colleagues (cf. Jewitt & Kress, 2003; Kress, 2003; Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996/2006, 2001). I will use this column as a platform for exploring emerging notions of multimodal literacies, a topic I continue to study in relation to digital storytelling practices (e.g., Hull & Nelson, 2005; Nelson, 2006; Nelson, 2008).