This accessible introduction to multimodality illuminates the potential of multimodal research for understanding the ways in which people communicate. Readers will become familiar with the key concepts and methods in various domains while learning how to engage critically with the notion of multimodality. The book challenges widely held assumptions about language and presents the practical steps involved in setting up a multimodal study, including: formulating research questions collecting research materials assessing and developing methods of transcription considering the ethical dimensions of multimodal research. A self-study guide is also included, designed as an optional stand-alone resource or as the basis for a short course. With a wide range of examples, clear practical support and a glossary of terms, Introducing Multimodality is an ideal reference for undergraduate and postgraduate students in multimodality, semiotics, applied linguistics and media and communication studies. Online materials, including colour images and more links to relevant resources, are available on the companion website at www.routledge.com/cw/jewitt and the Routledge Language and Communication Portal.

As words fly onto the computer screen, revolve, and dissolve, image, sound, and movement enter school classrooms in “new” and significant ways, ways that reconfigure the relationship of image and word. In this paper I discuss these “new” modal configurations and explore how they impact on students’ text production and reading in English schools. I look at the changing role of writing on screen, in particular how the visual character of writing and the increasingly dominant role of image unsettle and decentre the predominance of word. Through illustrative examples of ICT applications and students’ interaction with these in school English and science (and games in a home context), I explore how they seem to promote image over writing. More generally, I discuss what all of this means for literacy and how readers of school age interpret multimodal texts.

English in Urban Classrooms is a ground-breaking text that spans a range of issues central to school English today. It extends not only to the spoken and written language of classrooms, but also to other modes of representation and communication that are important in English teaching. This includes image, gesture, gaze, movement and spatial organisation. The team of experienced and expert authors collectively examine how English is shaped by policy, institutions and the social relations of the classroom. By connecting issues of policy and social context, the book provides a detailed account of factors such as: the characteristics of urban multi-cultural schools teacher formation and tradition the ethos of school English departments the institutional changes that have shaped school English in urban classrooms students' experiences of learning. This book offers a fascinating and enlightening read, not only to those involved in English teaching, but also to educational researchers, policymakers, linguists and those interested in semiotics and multi-modality.