Modes of Meaning and the New London Group
In 1996, the New London Group presented a theoretical manifesto of the connections between the changing social environment facing students and teachers and applied a new approach to literacy pedagogy "multiliteracies".
Multiliteracies is the concept of understanding information and the design of meaning through the manipulation of individual modes, these being: Linguistic Meaning, Visual Meaning, Audio Meaning, Gestural, Tactile and Spatial Meaning. Each mode has a different characteristic used for meaning-making, communication and representation of knowledge and ideas.
Multimodality is the combined use of several modes together and intentionally using a specific function of a mode to create a message for a purpose and audience. The New London Group manifesto was updated in 2009 to accommodate the expansion of modes bought about by new communication technologies.
- What is a mode? Berit Hendriksen and Gunther Kress discuss the notions of 'mode', 'resource', 'affordance' and 'sign'. Jeff Bezemer Published on Mar 15, 2012
- A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures The New London Group, Harvard Educational Review (1996), 66 (1)
- Glossary of multimodal terms A MODE initiative The glossary is a resource for those who want to engage with multimodal research, including ‘novice’ and ‘experienced’ researchers across the social sciences, arts and humanities. National Centre for Research Methods