Multimodality and writing: literacy issues for today

Abstract

Every text is multimodal: based on this idea and in the characteristics of infographics as a textual genre, this paper discusses: (a) text production modulations that implies one or more semiosis; (b) selections and editions that a writer necessarily does to compose a text – a multimodal one; (c) literacy demands and the domain of certain tools to access a high selection and edition level in writing, what implies (d) more and new ways to engage in writing culture. The “visual thinking” is, so, an important ability to multimodal writing. The discussion that we present here quickly takes for analysis seven students’ writing texts of a public Brazilian high school. The analyzed texts were obtained by recording and copying interviews. Nowadays these productions serve as a start-point for questions about literacy and visuality.