Mikko Lehtonen, Université de Tampere, Finlande.

multimodalité

« The second dimension of multi-modality, that of cultural modality, refers to the fact that all known human societies have used a variety of modes of representation. Cultures are never constructed by relying solely on one form of representation. Even the so-called “oral” societies had other symbolic forms then speech at their disposal. Each of the symbolic forms used by human culture has different representational potentials, different potentials for meaning-making. Hence when we translate from a mode to another, we have to add something that was not there, but we also necessarily take something away from what the first mode included, but that cannot be represented in another mode. »