A GENRE THEORY PERSPECTIVE ON DIGITAL ... - ETD

used, each time with different words and symbols. Also, an image may accumulate a semiotic
power of its own, which comes with the history of its use (e.g. from earlier use of the image as a
concrete representation of a person to later use of the image as the symbolic representation of an
abstract concept).
The arguments made by the multimodal semioticians have largely served to direct
analytical gaze on the short-lived composing process. Because the potential for authorship “lies
not so much in the words, images, sounds…but rather in between them, in the designing of
relations of meaning that bind semiotic modes together” (Nelson, 2006, p.57), research has
focused on the composing process as where to locate the dynamism of digital storytelling. In
comparison, a completed digital story stands as a static semiotic artifact whose meaning remains
stable and independent of the teller, which also makes it a good candidate for detailed
examination of multimodality. Such is the condition in which much of the analytical tool
building has taken place. In order to achieve sophisticated understanding of modalities (logics
and organizing principles of different modes) and the dynamism and complexity of the
synaesthetic production, a researcher often works to represent the modes in a visual layout that
arranges modal resources in separate but parallel channels.
Through these conceptual and analytical efforts, we have begun to understand the power
of multimedia composition and the challenges and rewards of doing digital storytelling. In his
research, Nelson (2005) has suggested that for writers who struggle with traditional writing,
digital storytelling can be especially powerful because it allows them to communicate and
negotiate meanings by means other than the impoverished linguistic modal resources they have
at disposal. On the other hand, digital storytelling presents challenges when different modal
discourse genres come into dissonance. For example, familiar genres and discourse conventions
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