摘要：Language has commonly been conceived as the central building block to meaning making, and to communication. Today, whichever way we turn, our senses are assailed by anarray of signs and visual modes of communication, from mobile telephony to the internet, advertising, graphic novels and cinema. Technological advances force language to take a back seat in favour of images and sounds, and away goes the division between form and expression of meaning. The analysis of language which has so far shaped our human experience clearly needs to be expanded to investigate the complexities of multimodal discourse. This volume, edited by Terry Royce and Wendy Bowcher, moves precisely in this direction by mapping uncharted territory in the sphere of multimodality.
