Dimensions of Materiality

The field of multimodality currently faces a double challenge: first, the datasets drawn on for bolstering argumentation need to grow in order to better support empirical investigation; and second, the communicative situations and artifacts addressed by the field are themselves becoming ever more complex. These demands raise a multitude of issues with methodological consequences for the everyday practice of analysing multimodal phenomena. In this chapter, it is argued that a thorough semiotic re-engagement with the nature of materiality and the distinct kinds of traces that materialities can support offers a powerful analytic technique for securing access to data regardless of how multimodally complex such data become. The chapter construes its account of materiality as an ‘external language of description’ in the sense of Legitimation Code Theory, by which analysis of multimodal data can proceed without presupposing the very theoretical categories for which empirical support is being sought. Several examples are discussed and the relevance of a more finely articulated notion of materiality for drawing connections between superficially quite different communicative situations demonstrated.