258 Nina Nørgaard
easily spotted and categorised in verbal language, since they differ semantically as well as in
their grammatical realisation, they are far more difficult to spot and categorise unambiguously
in visual communication. In verbal language, ―Peter and Janet are playing football‖ allows
only one interpretation: a material process (―are playing football‖) of which ―Peter and Janet‖
are the (active) participants. In visual communication, the depiction of the same experiential
situation is far more open to interpretation. It may just as well realise the meaning of e.g.
―Peter is kicking the ball to Janet‖, ―Janet receives the ball from Peter‖, ―Peter and Janet have
a ball‖, ―A girl, a boy and a ball are in the football field‖ as that of ―Peter and Janet are
playing football‖. Although visual images appear to construct experiential meaning similar to
that of verbal language, inherent differences between verbal and visual semiosis clearly call
for adjustments of the categories employed for analysis when the descriptive apparatus is
transferred from one semiotic mode to another. It is thus imperative that multimodal
stylisticians are aware of possible weaknesses of the paradigms they draw on for their
analysis. With this awareness sharpened, however, practitioners of multimodal stylistics may
in turn help qualify the multimodal paradigm itself through systematic practical analysis
which may reflect back on the theory and methodology employed, whether as a by-product of
the analysis or as its main incentive.
Another challenge inherited from multimodal semiotics and faced by multimodal
stylisticians concerns the question of how to actually handle the multitude of semiotic
systems involved in multimodal meaning-making. Where, broadly speaking, practitioners of
more traditional stylistics need a grammar of verbal language for their analysis, proponents of
multimodal stylistics will have to operate ―grammars‖ of several semiotic modes at the same
time: a verbal grammar, a grammar of visual images, a grammar of layout, a grammar of
typography, etc.
Ultimately, multimodal stylisticians (and proponents of multimodality) will have to
recognise that a systematic multimodal grammar of all semiotic modes and their interaction is
a laudable yet utopian ideal. It has to be faced that few academics will be experts in all modes
but will have to specialise in one or two and make do with a more general knowledge about
the rest – or, alternatively, cooperate with experts on modes of which they themselves have
less knowledge.
Altogether, the comprehensiveness of multimodal theorising so far has resulted in a
general coverage of a lot of multimodal ground, yet also makes for a tendency to scratch the
surface, due, perhaps, to its being the ―first wave‖ of a new academic paradigm. It is time to
qualify the initial claims of multimodal theory by more detailed qualitative and quantitative
investigations.
In addition to contributing to such qualifications, multimodal stylisticians may
furthermore remind other multimodal scholars of the central premise of multimodal thinking
that all semiotic modes are equally worthy of analytical attention and thereby counter the
tendency of much work in multimodality to focus on semiotic modes other than the verbal.
This being said, one of the weaknesses of multimodal stylistics at its present stage is exactly
this tendency to focus far more on modes other than the verbal (cf. Nørgaard, 2010b),
presumably because such modes have not previously been paid much attention in the field.
For multimodal stylistics to truly qualify as a branch of stylistics, this imbalance must be
addressed and gradually levelled out.