Functional Load
Functional load of modes is related to, but distinct and (independently variable) from,
functional specialisation. The term functional specialisation of modes refers to how
modes are shaped by societies’ usage of them to realise particular kinds of meaning,
at a general level. The term functional load of modes refers specifically to the use of
a mode in a particular occasion of communication: whether most of the
informational load is carried by speech, by image, or by gesture or by all three modes
together (Jewitt et. al, 2000). On a computer screen the curricular content (depending
on the school-subject at issue) might be carried by writing (i.e. the functional load
would be on the mode of writing) or by image, or it might be distributed evenly
between the two.
I use the concept of functional specialisation and load to explore how modes in
technology-mediated learning realise particular kinds of meaning, when modes are
used and what they are used for.
The Designed Interaction of Modes
Modes never occur alone in a text (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996). Even the practices
of writing and reading are multimodal practices, drawing on visual and actional
modes in particular the resources of spatiality and directionality (Kenner, in press).
How modes are orchestrated to make meaning is therefore central to a multimodal
approach. In any Communicational event one mode may be foregrounded and others
not. Within a multimodal approach to communication an assumption is that any mode
may become foregrounded or backgrounded. The foregrounding of different modes in
the multimodal ensemble shapes curricular knowledge in particular ways.
More recently Kress and van Leeuwen (2001) have argued that rather than focusing
on the semiotics of one mode (such as visual semiotics in their earlier work) there is a
need to explore the principles that stand behind multimodal communication:
43