ABSTRACT
In the first chapter we sketched the broader social and policy framework in which we set our attempt to understand English. In this chapter we provide a sketch of the theory and methodology we used to look at and describe English as it was being produced. This answers, we hope, the question of how our means of understanding and describing meaning-making differs from that of others who have written on English, and, in particular, how it goes beyond accounts that have been based on speech or writing alone. We have already mentioned the term multimodality several times, as a means of seeing meaning in visual displays, in classroom layout, in the voice-quality of the teacher, in diagrams and wall displays, in students’ posture, just as much as in what is said, written and read.
