Multimodal Exemplification: The Expansion of Meaning in Electronic Dictionaries

This article investigates electronic dictionaries under the framework of Systemic-Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis (SF-MDA) and argues for improving their exemplification multimodally. Multimodal devices, if well coordinated, can help optimize e-dictionary examples in informativity, diversity, dynamicity and interactivity. The term multimodal exemplification is tentatively proposed under the umbrella of multimodal lexicography (Lew 2010), and defined as the selection and presentation of examples with multimodal devices for achieving greater effectiveness in exemplifying than language does alone, especially in an e-dictionary. Evidence shows that multimodal exemplification can expand the three metafunctional meanings of the e-dictionary discourse: ideational, interpersonal and textual. Ideational meaning can be enriched by not only multimodal examples per se but also cross-modal example–definition ties, and hyperlinks facilitate meaning flow in the semantic network. Interpersonal meaning can be expanded by user participation and design options, including those for page layout (spatial mode) and example genre style (verbal mode). Textual meaning can be reinforced by information value, composition, salience and framing. This article makes a first attempt to explore the intermodal relationship between a definition and the examples under the same sense, and to present a diagram illustrating a typical design of visual space in e-dictionaries. By exploring the special features of multimodal example texts, it may deepen our understanding of the emerging multimodal lexicography and complement multimodal discourse studies from a lexicographical perspective.