According to Dressman (2019), multimodality involves using multiple different modes of communication in conjunction with each other, so technically all communication can be considered multimodal. An example of an important site of multimodal communication in my life is Twitch. Personally, my friends and I use Twitch similarly to Discord, where we have conversations with each other and pay no mind to trying to gain a following by appealing to the algorithm. Twitch combines many different forms of communication. If the person streaming has their microphone and camera on, then they are able to communicate both visually and audibly using speech and body language. Meanwhile, the chat is able to type things out into written word, with additional access to emojis and Twitch emotes. I feel like the fact that Twitch allows for the use of additional emojis (emotes) really helps those in chat convey their message easier, because the fact that they are images and GIFs helps give clues as to the tone and expression behind their words.

Using multimodal analysis as opposed to the traditional notions of literacy allows the receiver to have more context and information to decode the message correctly. This is because traditionally, only the content explicitly in the text is considered when decoding a message. So, this excludes all the other modes of communication (Stowe, 2012). Referring back to my example with Twitch, if you were to take away the emojis and emotes within the chat, again you lose information on the tone behind the words. That isn’t to say that traditionally, tone is impossible to decipher in written text, however it requires more interpretation on the reader’s part. Since some aspects could be left to interpretation, this heightens the chance of miscommunication. Multimodal analysis in a sense, just allows people to use all the resources they can to make sure that their message goes from point A to point B without any issues.

Dressman, M. (2019, November). Multimodality and Language Learning. Wiley. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781119472384.ch3

Stowe, S. A. (2012, May). Student Perceptions And Use Of Multimodal And Traditional Forms Of Composition. https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2396&context=all_theses