Multiliteracy

"The terms multimodality, multisemiotics and multiliteracies, then, are attempts to account for the diversity in communications that are encountered in everyday life, and how these affect what we make of them." (Williamson 2). So we have the three terms that basically describe the meaning of life, through a literary sense if you will. But what is the story behind these three semi - long words? Multimodality basically means using our five common senses to conncect with the world of a literary piece or the world in general. Multisemiotics builds upon the meaning of multimodial by basically stating that of course, we all use/have used our senses to receive a deeper meaning, but not everyone will configure the same meaning or get the same feeling from using their senses. Let's take this obvious example: the smell of meat; a vegetarian may quiver at the scent of hamburgers on the grill but a person who likes meat may have a drooling problem(if hungary). Actually, with meat, a vegetarian and a carnivore of course can use all there senses and of course each of their reactions will cause a different reactions. To move on, multiliteracy is basically like the term, multimedia (or at least nowadays). Multiliteracy basically states that in order for a person to fully understand something, a particular "design" must be used. Words, a lot of the times, are not enough for a person to fulling understand the concept. In my opinion, it is a good idea to use words, pictures, and human expressions/involvement. The example from the reading is perfect - the heart. The teacher draws is (picture of design), the teacher says"bump - bump" (word of design), and the use of the teacher's hands to describe the "bumping" (human involvement). Human involvement is important because your taking your own personal experience and teaching it to others that may have a similiar experience - relating to others is great writing/teaching skill.. We love to tell stories through our own eyes - it's human nature This particular literary design is almost like a life cylce, it constantly moves in a circulur motion.
In fact, McCloud brings forth this type of concept. He basically states that this cycle of design helps provide a deeper meaning. but sometimes comics have more art less words, more words, less art, or the amount of words and art are equal. Each of these different designs promote different ways of interpreting a literary piece.
In conclusion, this article is basically stating that we, as human beings have been using our senses since the beginning of time. Our senses have helped us come up with the crazy stories of today. Our senses have helped promote diversity that keeps our world and our wordly interpretations interesting. Thus, such diversity has been put to our multiliteracies; so many different ideas can be found through them intentionally or unintenionally.

So sorry that this is so long! If it makes your head hurt, just skim through it!...haha