174 Abstracts

1 NINA NØRGAARD 2 3 Modality. 4 5 Commitment, Truth Value and Reality Claims Across Modes in 6 Multimodal Novels 7 8 This article presents exploratory work in the newly emerging field of multimodal 9 stylistics. By bringing together literary studies, linguistics and multimodal semiot- 10 ics, multimodal stylisticians aim to extend the stylistic tool box by developing 11 methodological frameworks applicable to the description and analysis of literary 12 texts which – in addition to wording – make use of other semiotic modes such 13 as typography, visual images, colour and layout for their meaning-making. The ap- 14 proach to multimodality deployed and examined is that proposed, for instance, by 15 Kress and van Leeuwen (e. g. 1996; 2001) and Baldry and Thibault (2006). Ac- 16 cording to Kress and van Leeuwen (2001, 2) »common semiotic principles operate 17 in and across different modes«. Following this line of thought, the article sets out to 18 examine modality as a cross-modal semiotic principle. 19 After a brief introduction to the field of multimodal stylistics, the concept of 20 modality is presented in its (Hallidayan) linguistic context as a verbal resource 21 for the expression of speaker commitment by means of modal verbs, adverbials, 22 modalised sentences and metaphorised modality. From here, the concept is trans- 23 ferred to the context of visual communication where it concerns the truth value of 24 the visual representation, described at a »lexico-grammatical« level in terms of the 25 visual modal parameters of articulation of detail, background, light, shadow, depth 26 and colour (Kress/van Leeuwen 1996). Subsequently, the concept of modality is 27 applied to the analysis of two explicitly multimodal novels, with particular focus 28 on the realisation of modality in visual images and typography. The texts put up 29 for analysis are Alexander Masters’ Stuart. A Life Backwards and Jonathan Safran 30 Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. While Kress and van Leeuwen’s 31 modal parameters prove to apply well to the analysis of modality at a lexico-gram- 32 matical level of the photographic images, analysis of the two novels reveals that mo- 33 dality also appears to be at play at a discourse level as a result of the multimodal 34 interplay of the verbal and the visual. The analysis of Masters’ and Foer’s sporadic 35 use of special typography, in turn, reveals that although some of Kress and van 36 Leeuwen’s modality parameters may be applicable to typography, the descriptive 37 system is clearly less adequate in a typographic context where further work is needed 38 before workable tools can be added to the multimodal stylistic tool kit. 39 40 41 42 Modality. Commitment, Truth Value and Reality Claims 79

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 References 32 33 Baldry, Anthony/Paul Thibault, Multimodal Transcription and Text Analysis, London 2006. 34 Bateman, John A., Multimodality and Genre. A Foundation for the Systematic Analysis of Multi- 35 modal Documents, Hampshire/New York 2008. 36 Boeriis, Morten, A Mode Instantiation Model, in: Nina Nørgaard (ed.), Systemic Functional Linguistics in Use, Odense Working Papers in Language and Communication 29 (2008), 37 237–250. 38 Bordwell, David/Kristin Thompson, Film Art. An Introduction, New York 2008. 39 Foer, Jonathan Safran, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, London et al. 2005. 40 Gibbons, Alison, »I contain multitudes«: Narrative Multimodality and the Book that Bleeds, 41 in: Ruth Page (ed.), New Perspectives on Narrative and Multimodality, London 2010, 42 99–114. 80 Nina Nørgaard

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Abstract of: Nina Nørgaard, Modality. Commitment, Truth Value and Reality Claims Across Modes in Multimodal Novels. In: JLTonline (15.11.2010) Persistent Identifier: urn:nbn:de:0222-001354 Link: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0222-001354