Interview with Theo van Leeuwen

The scientific contribute is an interview with Professor Theo van Leeuwen, the co-founder - along with Gunther Kress - of Multimodal Studies. The Interview is part of a section of the Journal LEA (ISBN 978-88-6655883-5) edited by Ilaria Moschini and dedicated to the Critical Multimodal Analysis of Digital Discourse. Along with the interview and an introduction written by Ilaria Moschini, the section features essays by Carmen Daniela Maier, Sandra Petroni, Elisabetta Adami and Maria Grazia Sindoni. In the interview, starting from the fundamental role of the Hallidayan socio-semiotic approach to language in the development of Multimodality – van Leeuwen illustrates the background of his theoretical work as social semiotician and critical discourse analyst. Then, he broadly deals with issues such as the new emerging field of Critical Multimodal Studies, the importance of the socio-cultural perspective in Multimodality and the potential encounter between Multimodality and Cognitivism, with special reference to the concept of “social cognition” and to Metaphor Theory. He concludes his conversation with a reflection on the function of Studies in the Humanities in a specialised and digitally mediated world.