Book Reviews Multimodal Pedagogies in Diverse Classrooms: representation, rights and resources

Multimodality, which provides us with a new way to see texts, meaning-making and acts of communication in all its forms, has grown into a cutting-edge theoretical tool. Multimodal scholars have expanded the notion of ‘text’; while once it referred solely to static print, now the term ‘text’ can encompass images and layout (Kress, 2003, 2006), pedagogy (Lemke, 1990) and even schooling itself (Schleppegrell, 2004). Moreover, a theory of multimodality has expanded how we see language. Adding an explanation of how different linguistic and non-linguistic communicative forms combine to make meaning to the valuable work of the new literacy studies theorists, it has furthered the much-needed understanding that we can no longer look solely at texts in order to discern meaning (or meanings). Rather, multimodality reminds us that meaning is made by people, and we must examine how people use language with one another in order to understand texts, communication and the broader contexts of learning. Pippa Stein’s Multimodal Pedagogies in Diverse Classrooms: representation, rights and resources pushes this scholarship even further. She takes up ideas and terminologies that have become well-established concepts in multimodal studies but then extends them in new, interesting and necessary ways. For instance, ‘meaning potential’, a term from social semiotics, refers to the different way