Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication by Gunther Kress & Theo Van Leeuwen
In this short and sweet book, chock full of anecdote after anecdote, authors Kress & Van Leeuwen tackle the teaching of multimodal discourse via three elements within the discourse itself: design, production, and distribution. Despite all of these playing a vital role in creating a multimodal discourse, I truly feel that the cornerstone supporting multimodal discourse is the design element.
If I could interject my own anecdote from book publishing, the developmental editors (discourse: production) and the production team (discourse: distribution) cannot proceed with their jobs until acquisitions transmits their full manuscripts (discourse: design).
Hence, in the world of book publishing, acquisitions is most important because it takes thoughts from bustling genius brains and finds the way to make these thoughts tangible. Without mutlimodal discourse design, everything is intangible and then, not relevant. (Or as Kress & Van Leeuwen would say, not abstract.)
