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

producer of a sign, and assigned to its receiver. That is, the semiotic system has to
project a particular social relation between the producer, viewer, and the entity
represented. The linguistic resources for doing this include the system of inclusivity
and exclusivity, the system of mood with which you can make statement
(declarative), ask questions (interrogative), tell people to do things (imperative) etc.
These metafunctional meanings are realised, even though differently, through visual
communication, action, music, and so on.

The textual metafunction structures the message in relation to the total
communicative event; it organises the ideational and the interpersonal into texts. The
linguistic resources for this include the given∕new system, resources for creating
cohesion in text. Visually, different textual meanings can be realised through
compositional arrangements and the use of framing (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996).
As with the other modes the cohesion and coherence of texts can be realised through
the rhythm of sound (Burn and Parker, in press; van Leeuwen, 1999), and the pace
and rhythm of image.

Halliday and other systemic functional linguists tend to view the metafunctions and
corresponding system networks as mapping the potentials for making meaning, what
can be meant. The potential of a theory, any theory, to map all of the complex ways
in which people make meaning given the dynamic and changing character of meaning
making is questionable. I use the concept of metafunction as a conceptual tool to
think about meaning, semiotic resources and meaning potential in order to ask what
kind of Communicational work different modes on the computer screen (and
elsewhere) do and how. In this way, I use the metafunctions and the corresponding
system networks as a ‘map’ (in the broad sense) of possibilities and combinations, a
sketch or backdrop to meaning making, rather than a blue-print of the meaning
potentials available to all people. From this position, I view system networks as a
‘snap-shot’ of the meaning making potentials that people are acculturated into. (Like
all ‘snap-shots’ of an evolving process system networks are partial.)

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