The move from page to screen: the multimodal reshaping of school English

Abstract

In the move from page to screen a range of representational modes (including image, movement, gesture, and voice) are available as meaning-making resources. This article focuses on the reshaping of the entity ‘character’ in the transformation of the novel Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck, 1937) to CD-ROM (1996). Through detailed analysis the article demonstrates that the shift from written page to multimodal screen entails a shift in the construction of the entity ‘character’. It is also suggested that students’ interaction with the resources of the CD-ROM as a visual text demand that ‘reading’ and the process of learning within school English be thought of as more than a linguistic accomplishment.