Examples of Multimodal Texts

Multimodal texts mix modes in all sorts of combinations. While often one mode will predominate, more frequently, several modes combine to communicate a message or argument. We will look at several examples of multimodal texts below.

Example of multimodality: Scholarly text

Here is in an example of a standard scholarly book in a print edition. This text relies primarily on the linguistic mode. In other words, it is made up primarily of letters and words. However, because most texts are multimodal in some sense, there are at least three modes at work in this example.

scholarly book page with words arranged intentionally

  • The linguistic mode operates in the printed written text.
  • The visual mode operates in the formatting of the text (such as the use of fully justified margins) and in the choice of typography (such as the different fonts used for the chapter title and the use of brackets around the chapter title).
  • The spatial mode can be seen in the text’s arrangement (such as the placement of the epigraph from Francis Bacon’s Advancement of Learning at the top right and wrapping of the paragraph around it).

Example of Multimodality: Podcast+Website

Sometimes a text in a single modality can be augmented or expanded by other modalities. Take a look at the website for the first episode Someone Knows Something podcast. A podcast is entirely an aural text, but the website for the episode expands the podcast with images, text, and video related to the original narration. Thus, this episode’s web page is a multimodal refashioning of the original text.

practice: Examples of Multimodal Texts