ABSTRACT
The chapter describes the importance in the realization that multi-semiotic, or multi-modal means of communication are an essential part of what is means to be 'literate' in the modern world. It argues that the representational functions of the communication system have changed over the past 30 odd years and that these changes have had an effect on the language used. The chapter also describes that television and popular magazines as the two multi-semiotic forms of communication, plays a substantial role in our everyday lives. Television news has a genre of its own because it represents a particular way of collecting and establishing facts which are different from the way scientific facts might be established. The modality conventions, which operate in television news are not those of science, though news reports may draw on the resources of science genres. The television news is largely visual with spoken language as a commentary and framing rather than as the central means of communication.
