13.1 What are Multimodal Texts?
In college writing classes, you often write “traditional” essays. These traditional essays often look the same: paragraphs made up of black, Times New Roman font spaced evenly on a page of white paper. However, in addition to writing, or composing traditional essays, you might also be asked to compose a multimodal text. These modes of communication are:
- textual – this mode emphasizes text such as an essay.
- visual – this mode emphasizes what an audience can see such as videos, images, colors, etc.
- aural – this mode emphasizes what an audience can hear such as silence or music.
- gestural – this mode emphasizes movement such as gestures made during a speech.
- spatial – this mode emphasizes space such as the way an infographic might be composed to make it easier to read/understand quickly.
Most multimodal texts include a variety of these modes of communication; however, one is often emphasized more than others. For example, while a five-paragraph essay includes visual features such as font size and color as well as the use of space, it emphasizes the textual mode. As such, it is important to consider what mode you want to emphasize if/when you are assigned a multimodal project.
Multimodal composing practice has been integrated in many First-Year Writing classrooms across the US since the 1990s. Examples of digital multimodal texts (sometimes described as “new media”) include websites, infographics, podcasts, and videos while non-digital multimodal texts might take the form of posters, collages, zines, comic books, or graphs. While this is not an exhaustive list, it does demonstrate how common multimodal texts are both inside and outside of the classroom.
Why Compose Multimodal Texts?
There are many reasons to learn to compose multimodal texts including its ability to help you understand the importance of rhetorical situations, specifically audience expectations. Responding to a variety of rhetorical situations will also help prepare you for an array of projects and writing assignments in other classes. Additionally, Melanie Gagich, in her article “An Introduction to and Strategies for Multimodal Composing,” argues that:
Perhaps the most significant reason for learning how to compose multimodally is that it provides “real-life” skills that can help prepare students for careers. The United States continues to experience a “digital age” where employees are expected to have an understanding of how to use technology and communicate in various ways for various purposes. Takayoshi and Selfe argue that “[w]hatever profession students hope to enter in the 21st century . . . they can expect to read and be asked to help compose multimodal texts of various kinds . . .” (3). Additionally, professionals are also using the benefits of digital tools and multimodal composing to promote themselves, their interests, research, or all three. Learning how to create a multimodal text will prepare you for the workforce by allowing you to embrace the skills you already have and learn how to target specific audiences for specific reasons using various modes of communication (74).
Melanie Gagich
Multimodal Texts and Rhetorical Situations
At this point, you hopefully understand the importance of rhetoric in academia and the everyday world. While rhetorical situations ask you to begin to locate an existing text’s rhetorical situation, when creating a multimodal text, it is important to begin by outlining your rhetorical situation.
Students might believe that creating a multimodal text such as a website or podcast is simply a “fun” assignment that allows them to be creative. While this is most likely true, creating a multimodal text (digital or otherwise) is also an important and serious rhetorical endeavor. Think about the last time you posted a video (or put yourself in the shoes of an influencer you follow) – what kind of work went into your video before you created and then posted it? Did you think about what you wanted to achieve and who you wanted to view it? Perhaps you also considered the best lighting, outfit, etc. before actually making the video. These are rhetorical considerations and ones that are especially important when composing a multimodal text.
Who are you targeting?
Remember, knowing your audience will affect not only the language and images your choose to use but also the type of text you create (e.g., a video, podcast, website, infographic, poster, etc.) and where you eventually share that work (e.g., TikTok, Youtube, Spotify, etc.). So be sure to consider who you want to interact with your text.
What is your purpose and/or message?
Knowing what you want your audience to do or think is a very important step when composing a multimodal text. Further, you might have more than one purpose. For example, you might want to share your researched opinion online while also hoping for a lot of shares, likes, and/or DMs.
What genre will help you achieve your goal and reach your audience?
Genre essentially means “type of text” (for more information about genre, please read Kerry Dirk’s article, “Navigating Genres” in Writing Spaces vol. 1). It is important to choose an appropriate text for your audience rather than picking a type of text for other reasons (e.g., it seems cool or easier). For example, it might make more rhetorical sense to create a podcast if you are interested in sharing your research and opinions about why true crime is so popular in the US. On the other hand, if your purpose is to inform an audience about crime rates in the US using statistics, then an infographic is more appropriate.
Where should your text be shared?
In addition to the type of text you create, be sure to consider where you want to share it so it is most likely to reach your audience. While some multimodal assignments may not require you to share your work with real audiences (those outside the teacher and your classmates), others will. Therefore, it is important to think about where the best place to share your work is so that it reaches your ideal audience.
Being asked to compose a multimodal text can be daunting; however, below are some resources to help you get started.
Videos, articles, and books
In “Digital Composition and Multimodal Texts,” Jennifer Schaller and Tammy Wolf provide students with an overview of multimodal composing. They also provide thorough examples of how and when to integrate visuals (such as images, maps, graphics, diagrams, etc.) and audio (such as music and sound effects).
The book Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects by Cheryl E. Ball, Jennifer Sheppard, and Kristin L. Arola provides students with a step-by-step approach to creating a multimodal project beginning with the brainstorming phase and concluding with considerations about archiving your digital work. Check it out at the library.
For more information about multimodality, check out the six-minute video created by Sean Tingle, a college writing instructor, by clicking the link below:
Sean Tingle. “What is Multimodality,” 12 Oct. 2017, Youtube.
Attributions
A Guide to Rhetoric, Genre, and Success in First-Year Writing by Melanie Gagich & Emilie Zickel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
