Meaning Across Modes
Social Purpose and Intermodality in Children’s School Writing and Drawing
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22416147 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sofia Hort (0000-0003-1481-0007, Mälardalen University, corresponding author), Oscar Björk (0000-0001-5674-1391, Mälardalen University) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-07-17 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Written Communication (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0741-0883 • E-ISSN: 1552-8472 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/07410883261461556 |
| OpenAlex | W7169585726 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 30 |
In primary education, children frequently combine drawings with alphabetic writing in their compositions, and research has shown that drawing can support early writing development. Building on existing research on multimodality and intermodality in early writing, this study examines how drawing and writing function together in children’s multimodal compositions produced for diverse social purposes. The study analyses multimodal texts written by Swedish learners aged 7–8 years and explores intermodal relations between writing and drawing using a systemic functional, transitivity-based analytical approach. The findings indicate a predominance of word-led and combinatory intermodality, with alphabetic writing generally assuming a dominant role. At the same time, children strategically integrate drawing and writing in ways that vary according to social purpose, task theme, and the specific affordances of each mode. In several cases, drawing enables the expression of meanings that are less readily conveyed through writing alone, underscoring its distinct representational potential. The study contributes to ongoing work on intermodality in early school writing by demonstrating the analytical affordances of transitivity for examining multimodal meaning-making, and it highlights the need for pedagogical practices and teacher metalanguage that support flexible movement across semiotic modes in early literacy education.
Affordance · Discourse analysis · Literacy · Metalanguage · Multimodality · Semiotics · Social semiotics · Transitive relation · Literacy, Media, and Education · Reading and Literacy Development · Writing and Handwriting Education
Literacy in the New Media Age
Locating the Semiotic Power of Multimodality
An Introduction to Functional Grammar
Developing Multimodal Narrative Genres in Childhood
Towards a multimodal dialogic understanding of early writing development in school
The dialogism of ‘telling’
Multimodal Language of Attitude in Digital Composition
One Fourth-Grader’s Orchestration of Modes Through Comic Composition
Children’s Text Development
Intermodality in practice
A system for image-text relations in new (and old) media
Writing in Multimodal Texts
A multimodal discourse theory of visual narrative
| Highly cited | No |
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