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The term multimodality or MDA has been used to describe approaches that seek to explain communication and representation as being more than language and which addresses a wide range of communicational forms that people engage in during their interaction, for example, gaze, posture, sound and their relatedness (Jewitt 2009; Iedema 2003; Kress & Van Leeuwen 2006). In this respect, Iedema (2003) argues that the concept of multimodality was introduced in order to demonstrate the importance of taking into account semiotics other than language-in-use, such as image, music, gesture and so on. One of the factors attributed to the birth of multimodality is technology mediated communication which has enhanced the multisemiotic complexity of representations around us. The phenomenon has been made complex by sound and image that are now taking over the roles associated with language (Iedema 2003). In fact, all discourse is said to be multimodal in nature, that is to say, language in use, whether it be in the form of spoken or text, is always constructed across multiple modes of communication. This would include speech and gesture in spoken language and contextual phenomena as in the use of physical spaces in which we carry out our discursive actions or the design, papers and typography of documents within which our texts are presented (Levine & Scollon 2004).

Moreover, Jewitt (2009) argues that one of the assumptions that underpin multimodality is that language is part of multimodal organization. This assumption stipulates that in as much as language is considered to be a fundamental mode of communication, especially in areas such as education, communication and representation often draws on a multiplicity of modes (see Kress & Van Leeuwen 2006; Iedema 2003). These modes all play an important role or have equal potential in contributing to meaning making. This implies that multimodality considers all modes as important aspects in the process of constructing meaning. Consequently, the primary assumption of multimodality is that meanings are made and distributed, received, interpreted and remade in interpretation through many representational and communicational modes (Kress & Van Leeuwen 2006; Van Leeuwen 2008; Prior & Hengst 2010). On this account, all interactions are said to be multimodal. Accordingly, multimodality tends to move away from the assumption that language always plays a key role in interaction while acknowledging the fact it often does.

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Thus, multimodal research focuses on analyzing and describing the “full repertoire of meaning- making resources which people use to communicate and represent and how these are organized to make meaning” (Jewitt 2009:15). This means that, from a multimodal point of view, language is just one mode among a multimodal organization of modes (cf. O’Halloran 2004 Kress & Van Leeuwen 2001; Martin & Rose 2003). This theory is important in the analysis of data in this study as it considers many aspects of communication in which language is just one of the modes of communication in the process of meaning making.

Multimodality is different from studies that consider non-verbal modes as it does not view language as the beginning point or as providing a “prototypical model of all modes of communication” (Jewitt 2009:15). This implies that language is no longer providing the conceptual tools, framework or processes for describing all other aspects of communication. In this vein, multimodality offers new ways and methods for understanding language and communication in general.

Jewitt (2009:15) further adds that the other assumption of multimodality is that each mode in a multimodal organization is understood as accomplishing different roles of communicative work. Multimodality assumes that “all modes, like language, have been shaped through their cultural, historical and social uses to realize social functions” (cf. Iedema 2003). Multimodality considers all communicational acts as inclusive of and through the social. Image and other non-linguistic modes take on particular roles at a given time and at a particular moment. Iedema (2003) argues that these roles are not fixed but articulated and situated.

From the foregoing, it follows then that MDA as a growing theory in discourse studies does not only focus on language in isolation but in combination with other resources such as images, scientific symbolism, genre, action, music and sound. This study finds this theoretical position particularly important to the study given the nature of the data analysed.

Therefore, MDA enables different modalities that constitute any multimodal text to be analyzed textually. This in turn means an all-encompassing interpretation of texts as sums of communication events rather than interpreting on mode in isolation (Iedema 2003; Martin &

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Rose 2003). In short, the various texts which constitute the material resources for the study are analyzed through what Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006, 2001) call 'the grammar of visual design' to distinguish it from grammar as it is understood in general linguistics. This design helps us to understand how different modes are used for particular events and as well as being a tool for interpreting and analysis of "semiotic resources and semantic expansions which occur as semiotic choices combine in multimodal phenomena" O’Halloran (2011:2).

Generally, the trend toward multimodal appreciation of meaning making centres around two issues: the first involves the de-centering of language as favored meaning making and the second, the revisiting and blurring of the traditional boundaries between and roles allocated to language, image, page layout, dominant design and so on (Iedema 2003 O’Halloran 2004).

In addition, Iedema (2003:39) emphasizes that multimodality is about appreciating that language is not “at all the centre of communication”. Thus, multimodality further aims to highlight that the meaning work that people do always exploits various semiotics, of which language is a part or may not be. He demonstrates how in talk, we “mobilize language as sounded speech, and we further ‘mean’ through gestures, postures, facial expression, and other embodied resources such as physical distance, stance, movement….’ (Iedema 2003:39). By considering all these, multimodality aims to demonstrate how gesture and talk co-occur, how language and image work together or image, language and sound are coordinated. Thus MDA “most excitingly…will enable us to talk about how ‘design’ principles re-appear across different semiotics and how they traverse radically different domains of social life.” (Iedema 2003:39). MDA therefore adequately accounts for the various occurrences of multimodal semiotic resources in multilingual discourse practices of Lusaka which this study focuses on.