Afterword: Legitimating multimodality

Abstract

This afterword draws insights and conclusions from the preceding chapters by critically engaging once again with the disciplinary status of multimodality. It explicates the main points of discussion of the contributions and makes some recommendations concerning disciplinarity and multimodality. The path taken addresses multimodality at a fundamental philosophical and practical level, reflecting some of the requirements that establishing a discipline of multimodality would entail. This presents multimodality and its study increasingly in a particular light of its own and, as a consequence, it will be argued that a strengthening of disciplinary claims for multimodality is at this time not only beneficial but, in certain important respects, crucial for advancing beyond the current, somewhat disparate, state(s) of the art.