Annotated Bibliography 1: Multimedia Genres and Traversals

Lemke, J. L. (2005). Multimedia Genres and Traversals. Folia Linguistica, 39(1), 45-56.

In “Multimedia Genres and Traversals”, Lemke considers two important questions related to genre theory: multimodality and the shifts users make between diverse genres over the long- and short-term.  The article is divided between discussions of these two questions.  The first question revolves around the intrinsic multimodality of genre and basically asks the question, “If genre is, and always has been, multimodal, then what changes must genre theory make to accommodate the ‘visual-spatial meaning systems’ (45) of texts?”  The second question considers attentional shifts of a user moving from one genre in one moment to another genre in another moment.  Like the hypertextual link that a user clicks on a webpage, these moves end up directing attention from one text to another and thus generate their own forms of cohesion: “Meaning is no longer internal to genre and institutions. It is also made across and between them, as we juxtapose, catenate, and traverse not just websites or television channels, but, on longer timescales, the sites and roles of our days, weeks, and lives” (51).

In this article Lemke uses no specific artifacts nor reports on any specific research.  Instead, the article argues the need to further conceptualize the multimodal aspects of genre, extends the analytical framework to better tackle visual-spatial meaning, and complicates the genre landscape by not only reinforcing generic diversity but proposing the idea of traversals as dynamic pathways of meaning external to genres themselves.

Lemke’s article added value to me by expanding my awareness of some of the elements of a multimodal genre analysis. Since it is precisely the “visual-spatial meaning” of genre that I hope to investigate in my research, a good starting point was a discussion of genre as multimodal.  Lemke begins the article by defining genre as a multimodal package and using examples to demonstrate how “orthography, typography and page layout” (45) include visual-spatial elements even when other images are not present.  A significant challenge of multimodal analysis, however, involves the question of sequentiality.  Having multiple elements as part of a page layout means that attention may not be directed in a linear fashion. Users have the freedom to switch attention between elements during the reading.  Genre theorists have often analyzed genre in terms of linear moves.  Lemke suggests that multimodal genres are “loosely constrained” in terms of sequence and offer “multi-sequential” pathways, yet at the same time genre conventions are still operating (48).  Researchers need to find ways to discuss both the possibilities and probabilities within a given genre.  Lemke also offers value in this article by posing three questions on verbal-visual relationships that need to be explicated in genre theory to guide analysis and explain how cohesion is created from text to images or figures, from images or figures to texts, and within texts and within visuals.  These questions showed me some things to demand from an analytical framework.  On the other hand, I found the discussion of traversals to be interesting but not immediately useful.  Lemke broadened my awareness of the generic landscape, a useful first step.  Nevertheless, if one is seeking specific analytical tools, this article is not the place to look.