A Multimodal Framework for Computer Mediated Learning: The Reshaping of Curriculum Knowledge and Learning

In bringing together the concepts of multimodality and activity theory my intention is
to reconfigure both of these theoretical approaches in significant ways for learning.
By focusing on the multimodal resources of screen and the multimodal character of
learning more generally I challenge activity theory to look beyond language. I argue
that the semiotic resources of a range of modes, a multimodal ensemble of which
language (speech and writing) is only a part, shape semiotic mediation and the
process of internalisation. In moving beyond the individual sign maker to understand
meaning making as situated within a system of activity (in this thesis the school
classroom) I refocus multimodality by ‘filling in’ the social and historical forces that
underpin and shape learning.

In this chapter I address four points. First I discuss the way in which social semiotics
theorises meaning making as a relationship between the social and ‘semiotic
resources’, a concept that is central to social semiotics and to this thesis. Second, I
describe how a multimodal approach expands the concept of semiotic resource to a
range of representational and Communicational modes beyond language. Third, I
argue that combining a multimodal social semiotic approach and activity theory
offers a better understanding of the dynamic social relationship between sign, the
agency of the sign maker, semiotic resource and the social context of making
meaning. Fourth, I then discuss the ways in which these theoretical concepts inform
the view of learning taken in this thesis.

Multimodal Meaning Making

For Halliday (1978), whose focus is on language, a semantic system is shaped by the
social functions of the utterance (sign) as representation, as interaction, and as
message. He calls these three social functions metafunctions. These metafunctions are
meaning potentials, what can be meant, what can be done. According to meta-
functional theory language simultaneously realises three kinds of meaning: ideational
meaning, which functions to construct representations of the world, interpersonal
meaning, which characterises specific social relations, and textual meaning, which

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