Multi-modal critical discourse analysis

Multi-modality is becoming more common in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as scholars begin to introduce visual, sound and material design alongside their analyses of texts. This chapter shows that Multi-modal CDA needs to depart from a fundamentally social question: What semiotic resources are drawn upon in communication, or discourse, in order to carry out ideological work? It looks at the origins of multi-modality and the different paths it has taken. The chapter deals with criticisms that have been raised against these paths. These two steps are important to indicate the necessity for a social approach. The chapter shows exactly how this approach would work by carrying out an analysis of a set of university performance management documents which contain writing, photography, layout, tables, bulleted lists and numbers. It also shows how the different kinds of semiotic resources are deployed to do very different things – because each has very specific affordances, which can be deployed for the purposes of re-contextualisation.