Blog Post 7

Every mode that is used in a work of multimodality has a specific purpose. Every mode is chosen or not chosen for the purpose of getting the audience to see something. Mode is directly linked to audience. In Chandler’s concept of genre, genre is seen to “increase the efficiency of communication” it is how an audience links what has happened to something they understand. The concept of categorization fits when talking about both multimodality and genre. People pick modes and put them into a piece that fits into a particular genre. It is basically categorizing the modes to the categorizations of genres. As in one of our previous readings a student would take the mode of word fonts (this is a category) and pick a professional looking font like times new roman for the submission of their paper (the essay would be the genre). The genre and the modes used would communicate most effectively to the teacher reading it. Chandler also says that some other people say, “that making sense of texts within genres is an active process of constructing meaning”. I agree with this assertion. Like I said before through modes the audience is being directed a certain way and the modes that are used, are used within the guidelines of a specific genre so that the audience is able construct meaning on the basis of what has been presented. Genres and multimodality can almost be regarded as one and the same with in the source of Chandler’s Appendix 2: Generic Textual Features of Film and Television in that some of the textual properties that he list can also be viewed as modes.