ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the Genre and Multimodality model (GeM), which is an analytical framework geared towards the comprehensive, empirical analysis of multimodal artefacts. The GeM model advocates an empirical approach to studying multi-modal artefacts, that is, identifying and analysing multimodal phenomena, formulating hypotheses, checking them against corpora and feeding the results back into the theory. It has four analytical layers: the base, layout, rhetorical and navigation layers. In the GeM model, the area model uses a 'typographic' or 'baseline' grid, which is a well-established design tool in document, book, and graphic design. The realisation information allows the GeM model to describe the content's typographic features with relative accuracy. Gem Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) includes five additional relations to describe what Bateman in terms of subnuclear elaboration: identification, class-ascription, property-ascription, possession, and location. Bateman proposes that the semiotic resources include paradigmatic systems of choice together with a syntagmatic organisation for re-expressing paradigmatic choices in structural configurations.
