Multimodal Stylistics Analysis

1023 Words3 Pages

Advances in technology and cultural developments over the last few decades have led to an increased production of multimodal texts (McIntyre and Busse 2010, pg.433). As these multimodal texts have developed, it can be said that the field of stylistics has needed to develop the tools for analysing the effects these texts create (Jeffries and McIntyre 2010, pg.194). Multimodal stylistics is a relatively new branch of stylistics and with the focus of multimodal stylistics being the meaning that is made through multi-semiotic modes the scope can be extended beyond literary texts to include analyses of film and drama (Norgaard et al. 2010, pg.30).

Analysis of literary texts are being undertaken by scholars such as Norgaard (2009) whose research looks at typography and other semiotic modes, and Gibbons (2011 to be published) whose research looks at cognitive poetics. Gibbons (2011, pg.2) explains ‘multimodal printed literature’ can include children’s picture books, however as yet there has been no attention paid to this area. Therefore this essay investigates original ground in multimodal stylistics by examining ‘Sir Charlie Stinky Socks and the Really Big Adventure’, a children’s book aimed at children over the age of three (Egmont 2011, online) using multimodal stylistics.

Page (2010, pg.4) explains that ‘multimodality insists on the multiple integration of semiotic resources in all communicative events’. Multimodality is a part of everyday life, any conversation we have, consists of gesture, intonation and language (Gibbons 2011, pg.12). McIntyre and Busse (2010, pg.436) explain that although the word multimodal implies the existence of a ‘mono-modes’, these cannot exist. Even written verbal language can be multimoda...

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JEFFRIES, L. and MCINTYRE, D. (2010) Stylistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

MCINTYRE, D. and BUSSE, B. (eds.) (2010) Language and Style. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

NORGAARD, N. (2009) The Semiotics of Typography in Literary Texts. A Multimodal Approach. Orbis Litterarum. 64: 2 141-160 [WWW] Available from: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0730.2008.00949.x/full [Accessed 03/04/2011]

PAGE, R. (eds.) (2010) New Perspectives on Narrative and Multimodality. Abingdon: Routledge. (Gibbons and Norgaard feature in this book, how do you reference them??)

GIBBONS, A. (2010)

NORGAARD, N. (2010)

Hall, C. (2008) ‘Imagination and multimodality: reading, picturebooks and anxieties about childhood’, in Sipes, L. and Pantaleo, S. (eds) Postmodern Picturebooks: Play, Parody, and Self-Referentiality, New York; London: Routledge, pp.130-146.

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