Introduction: Multimodal media

Abstract

Introduced here by its guest editors, this special issue of Poetics Today focuses on multimodal media. Its purpose is twofold. On the one hand, it aims to explore the multimodal combination of semiotic resources in a range of primarily aesthetic media forms that until now have attracted comparatively little attention in multimodality studies, including not only multimodal novels, comics, and films but also current television programs, video games, and other forms of digital media. On the other hand, and no less importantly, the articles collected here engage with previously underexplored dimensions of multimodality and thus expand our understanding of what multimodality can mean, including not only perceptual and semiotic but also referential and participatory multimodality.