Available online xxxx  可在线 xxxx

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. 保留所有权利。

Discussions of contemporary communication are now being confronted with unprecedented challenges. Communicative situations, as well as the media within which communication takes place, exhibit a hitherto unseen breadth and diversity. Many genres reappear not only in distinct media - such as printed texts, film, TV, and websites - but also in combinations of media, such as when a narrative may be carried partly by film, partly in a webseries, and in a comic or graphic novel. Ever more extreme transferals of partial form and content - as, for example, transfers between film and items of clothing or toys, or between TV and computer games, or between newspapers and iPads - are already long commonplace.
当代传播的讨论正面临着前所未有的挑战。传播环境以及传播媒介展现出前所未有的广度和多样性。许多类型不仅出现在不同的媒体中（如印刷文本、电影、电视和网站），还出现在多种媒体的组合中，例如，一个故事可能部分通过电影、部分通过网络连续剧、漫画或图画小说来传播。部分形式和内容的极端转换早已司空见惯，例如，电影与衣物或玩具之间的转换、电视与电脑游戏之间的转换、报纸与 iPad 之间的转换。

These circumstances have given rise to a host of more or less explicit considerations of ‘intermediality’ or ‘transmediality’ from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. We find, for example, a wealth of broadly culturally-inflected approaches involving notions such as ‘re-mediation’ (Bolter and Grusin, 2000) and ‘media convergence’ (Jenkins, 2008; Grant and Wilkinson, 2009; Hassler-Forest and Nicklas, 2015); we also see literary and art historical discussions in terms of ‘transmediation’, ‘intermediality’, ‘media reflexivity’ and ‘media transformations’ (Higgins, 1984; Clüver, 2007; Murphet, 2009; Elleström, 2014; Bruhn, 2016; Jensen, 2016), often related to such apparently transmedial phenomena as narrativity (Ryan, 2004; Rajewsky, 2005; Wolf, 2005; Wolf, 2007), ‘re-mixing’ and ‘soft’ media boundaries (e.g., Manovich, 2001; 133), as well as semiotic and linguistic discussions of multimediality and multimodality as phenomena in their
这些情况促使人们从各种学科角度对“媒介间性”或“跨媒介性”进行了或多或少明确的思考。例如，我们发现了大量受到广泛文化影响的方法，涉及“再中介”（Bolter 和 Grusin，2000 年）和“媒体融合”（Jenkins，2008 年；Grant 和 Wilkinson，2009 年；Hassler-Forest 和 Nicklas，2015 年）等概念；我们还可以看到，文学和艺术史中关于“跨媒体”、“媒介间性”、“媒介反身性”和“媒介转型”的讨论（Higgins，1984；Clüver，2007；Murphet，2009；Elleström，2014；Bruhn，2016；Jensen，2016），这些讨论通常与诸如叙事性（Ryan，2004；Rajewsky，2005；Wolf，2005；Wolf，2007）、“重新混合”和“软”媒体边界（例如，Manovich，2001；133）等明显的跨媒体现象有关，以及符号学和语言学关于多媒体性和多模态性的讨论，将其视为其语言中的现象。
own right (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001; Jäger, 2004; Stöckl, 2004b; Elleström, 2010a; Holly, 2011; Stöckl, 2016) and philosophical treatments of mediality as such (e.g., SachsHombach, 2003; Sandbothe and Nagl, 2005; Krämer, 2008). The all enveloping nature of medial relations is also increasingly mobilised in sociological accounts of communication - as, for example, in constructs such as ‘mediatization’ (Krotz, 2009; Couldry and Hepp, 2017). These references barely scratch the surface of current discussion, establishing the question of how to engage satisfactorily with media as a central one for the majority of fields now concerned with communication.
媒体关系的包罗万象性也越来越多地出现在社会学传播论述中，例如在“媒体化”等概念中（Krotz，2009；Couldry and Hepp，2017）。这些参考文献仅仅触及了当前讨论的表面，而如何令人满意地与媒体打交道的问题，则成为目前大多数传播领域的核心问题。

Despite this level of activity, the extent to which foundations have been achieved that are capable of addressing both, on the one hand, the specifics of particular cases of ‘inter-’ or ‘transmediality’ and, on the other, relating those specifics to general principles of meaning and signifying practices, is more than questionable. Lars Elleström, in an account in many respects similar in aims to that pursued here, argues that understanding intermediality demands far more precision in the definitions of its core notions - specifically that of medium - than have been achieved to date:
尽管活动水平如此之高，但目前已建立的基础在多大程度上能够解决“跨媒介性”或“跨媒介性”的具体情况，以及将这些具体情况与意义和符号实践的一般原则联系起来，这一点值得怀疑。Lars Elleström 在其许多方面与本文目标相似的论述中指出，要理解跨媒介性，就需要对其核心概念（特别是媒介）的定义比迄今为止实现的要精确得多：
“The problem is that intermediality has tended to be discussed without clarification of what a medium actually is. …I find it as unsatisfying to continue talking about ‘writing’, ‘film’, ‘performance’, ‘music’ and ‘television’ as if they were like different persons that can be married and divorced as to find repose in the belief that all media can be fundamentally blended in a hermaphroditical way.” (Elleström, 2010b: 11-12)
“问题在于，人们往往在讨论媒介间性时，并未明确媒介究竟是什么。……我发现，继续谈论‘写作’、‘电影’、‘表演’、‘音乐’和‘电视’，好像他们就像不同的人，可以结婚和离婚，这与相信所有媒介都可以以雌雄同体的方式从根本上融合在一起一样令人不满意。”（Elleström，2010b：11-12）
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2017.06.009
2211-6958/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2211-6958/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. 保留所有权利。

Addressing this concern is also the task that will be taken up here, complementing Elleström’s approach with a perspective grounded in multimodality theory. The key to the discussion will lie in the articulation of a broader, semiotically-founded conception of signification in which several distinct kinds of ‘semiotic work’ are necessarily co-present. These kinds of work will constitute a scaffold against which notions of media and mediality can find a natural home.
解决这一问题也是本文要解决的任务，以多模态理论为基础的视角补充 Ellestrom 的方法。讨论的关键在于阐明一种更广泛的、以符号学为基础的意义概念，其中必然存在几种不同类型的“符号学工作”。这些类型的工作将构成一个支架，媒体和媒介性的概念可以在其上找到自然的归宿。

The paper begins with a critical review of some prominent contemporary considerations of ‘medium’, and then proceeds to the more detailed proposals made by Elleström for a media-centered definition of intermediality and transmediality. Following this, I offer a further refinement drawing on a semiotically-enriched characterization of semiotic modes and multimodality. The approach developed will be illustrated with respect to several examples, suggesting how a more fine-grained tracking of medial relationships, influences and change may be pursued in the future.
本文首先对当代一些著名的“媒介”观点进行了批判性回顾，然后进一步讨论了 Elleström 提出的以媒介为中心的跨媒介性和跨媒介性定义。随后，我将基于符号学丰富的符号模式和多模态性特征进行进一步完善。本文将通过几个例子来说明所开发的方法，并指出未来如何更细致地追踪媒介关系、影响和变化。

‘Medium’ is a far from clear notion. Entire bodies of literature debate both potential definitions and the utility of pursuing definitions at all. Positions range from the broadest imaginable Luhmann (1997: 122), for example, takes the most general medium to be ‘meaning’ as such - through to more restricted orientations to media as the “material resources used in the production of semiotic products and events, including both the tools and the materials used” (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001: 21-22). Broad differences also exist between positions that focus on the phenomenon of mediality itself and those that place media within models of communication. The former lend themselves to accounts in which a medium is anything that ‘extends’ potential social configurations, as argued prominently by McLuhan (2002 [1964]); the latter characterize ‘medium’ more as an ‘in between’ - i.e., that which supports and carries communication between interactants or broader classes of ‘communicators’.
“媒介”是一个远非清晰的概念。所有文献都在争论其潜在定义以及寻求定义的效用。立场范围广泛，例如，卢曼（1997：122）认为最普遍的媒介就是“意义”本身，而更为有限的立场则认为媒介是“用于生产符号产品和事件的物质资源，包括使用的工具和材料”（Kress and van Leeuwen，2001：21-22）。关注媒介现象本身的立场与将媒介置于传播模型中的立场之间也存在着巨大的差异。前者认为媒介是“扩展”潜在社会结构的任何事物，正如麦克卢汉（2002 [1964]）所指出的那样；后者则将“媒介”更多地描述为“中间”——即支持和承载互动者或更广泛的“传播者”群体之间的交流。

For present purposes, I will take McLuhan’s focus on social effect and cultural institutions as criterial for what a notion of ‘mediality’ can bring to theoretical discussion and practical analysis. However, at the same time, I will argue that anchoring mediality within a broader view of (multimodal) communication is both beneficial and necessary for an effective account. The decentralization of communication common in media-oriented theoretical reflection leaves positions less able to provide detailed analysis and are relatively undifferentiating - a situation that can already be diagnosed in the often cited statement from McLuhan:
就目前而言，我将以麦克卢汉对社会影响和文化机构的关注作为“媒介性”概念能够为理论讨论和实践分析带来什么的标准。然而，与此同时，我将论证将媒介性锚定在更广泛的（多模态）通信视角中对于有效的解释既有益又必要。在以媒体为导向的理论反思中，通信分散化是常见的现象，这使得立场无法提供详细的分析，而且相对没有区别——这种情况已经可以在经常被引用的麦克卢汉的陈述中得到诊断：
“the ‘content’ of any medium is always another medium. The content of writing is speech, just as the written word is the content of print, and print is the content of the telegraph.” (McLuhan, 2002 [1964]: 8)
“任何媒介的‘内容’总是另一种媒介。写作的内容是言语，正如书面文字是印刷品的内容，印刷品是电报的内容一样。”（McLuhan，2002 [1964]：8）
The scare quotes around ‘content’ are entirely appropriate as to talk of content in this way conflates several dimensions of semiotic description. Similar problems arise in other discursive contexts as in, for example, W.J.T. Mitchell’s well known pronouncement that “all media are mixed media” (Mitchell, 2005: 215). The argument pursued in the present paper will be that ‘medium’ is being made to do a range of quite different tasks and that a more discriminating framework can parcel out theoretical responsibilities more effectively.
“内容”两边的引号非常恰当，因为以这种方式谈论内容会混淆符号描述的多个维度。其他话语语境中也存在类似的问题，例如 WJT Mitchell 的著名言论“所有媒体都是混合媒体”（Mitchell，2005：215）。本文将探讨的论点是，“媒体”被用来完成一系列完全不同的任务，而更具辨别力的框架可以更有效地分配理论责任。

It is in many cases the vagueness of the definitions of ‘media’ or ‘medium’ that are drawn on that makes conclusions of intrinsic mixing both inescapable and, in many respects, ineffective. Starting points of this kind seldom provide sufficient hold on the topic to be revealing; philosophically important and insightful
在许多情况下，正是由于“媒体”或“媒介”的定义模糊，才使得得出内在混合的结论既不可避免，又在许多方面无效。这种出发点很少能充分把握主题，从而具有启发性、哲学意义和洞察力
foundational positions (cf. McLuhan, 2002 [1964]; Nöth, 1997; Krämer, 2008) have as a consequence not so far been able to take the next steps in analytic precision necessary. To adopt a mathematical metaphor, current theoretical discussion of media and mediality concerns bundles of phenomena that are formed and grouped differently in different communities. Discussions of these bundles, regardless of how formed, generally come to resemble attempts to solve a system of simultaneous equations in three variables with only two equations. Under these conditions, the solutions proposed will always show slippage as one dimension of variation has been left open.
因此，基础立场（参见 McLuhan，2002 [1964]；Nöth，1997；Krämer，2008）至今未能在必要的分析精度方面迈出下一步。用数学比喻来说，当前关于媒体和媒介性的理论讨论涉及在不同社区中形成和分组不同的现象束。对这些现象束的讨论，无论如何形成，通常都类似于尝试仅用两个方程来解决三个变量的联立方程组。在这些条件下，提出的解决方案将始终显示滑移，因为一个变化维度被保留了下来。

This paper will therefore adopt a different strategy by working towards an account of communication in which a suitable reading of ‘medium’ emerges as a label for some rather specific facets of the overall signifying work performed during semiosis, distinguished by their relations to other necessary facets. The anchoring with respect to a semiotic foundation consequently seeks to reduce the inherent slippage of previous discussions so that it becomes clearer analytically just what work is being performed under the various guises of ‘media’ and ‘mediality’ and how that work can be effectively distributed across the model as a whole. In many respects, this parallels the approach to medium and mediality proposed by Schneider et al. (2010):
因此，本文将采用不同的策略，致力于阐述一种传播学，其中对“媒介”的适当解读成为符号学过程中执行的整体符号工作的一些相当具体的方面的标签，这些方面与其他必要方面有关系。因此，以符号学基础为依据的锚定旨在减少先前讨论中固有的偏差，以便从分析上更清楚地了解在“媒体”和“媒介性”的各种幌子下正在执行什么工作，以及如何在整个模型中有效地分配这些工作。在许多方面，这与 Schneider 等人 (2010) 提出的媒介和媒介性方法相似：
“. . . one central strategy of our research was the refusal to limit our conceptual work regarding the term ‘medium’ by definitions or stipulations. Rather . . .we should reformulate questions of what into questions of how. Our focus now became not so much what a medium is but rather how media operate, i.e., which operational logic they are following on the one hand, and which ones they develop while processing on the other.” (Schneider et al., 2010: 12; original emphasis)
“……我们研究的一个核心策略是拒绝用定义或规定来限制我们关于‘媒介’一词的概念工作。相反……我们应该把‘是什么’的问题重新表述为‘如何’的问题。我们现在的重点不再是媒介是什么，而是媒介如何运作，即它们一方面遵循哪些运作逻辑，另一方面在处理过程中发展了哪些逻辑。”（Schneider 等，2010：12；原文重点）
However, whereas Schneider et al. (2010) still orient to classical media perspectives extended to include notions of performance and the body, the direction here will be back towards semiotic foundations capable both of underwriting all such developments equally and of drawing beneficial distinctions among the rather diverse ‘operational logics’ involved.
然而，尽管 Schneider 等人（2010）仍然倾向于将古典媒体视角扩展到包括表演和身体的概念，但这里的方向将回到符号学基础，这种基础既能够平等地支持所有此类发展，也能够在所涉及的相当多样化的“操作逻辑”之间做出有益的区分。

Unravelling the distinct communicative tasks necessarily at work will also clarify the use of terms across disciplinary boundaries since several ‘neighbouring’ areas of discussion employ terms partially overlapping with apparently intended meanings of ‘medium’. Particularly relevant for the concerns of the current paper, for example, is the term ‘mode’. This is sometimes sharply distinguished (in certain respects) from ‘medium’, sometimes not. In both cases, we find similar ‘dimensional reductions’ that conflate phenomena in ways compromising analysis. On the one hand, discussion in the field of mediality and transmediality is generally couched in terms of media or communicative forms, i.e., medially conditioned cultural practices (cf. Holly, 2011) - and only relatively oblique or uncritical uses of ‘modality’ in the sense used in multimodality studies appear; on the other hand, in multimodality studies, discussion refers more to the diverse expressive forms found in communication, to the codes or semiotic systems employed, and only relatively simple and restricted reference to notions of media appear (cf. Norris, 2004; Kress, 2010; Stöckl, 2016), most commonly in the traditional sense mentioned above of the ‘material’ that the diverse expressive forms of interest may draw upon (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001: 21-22). In the first orientation ‘media’ does all the work and there is little left to be achieved by ‘modes’, whatever they may be; in the second orientation, ‘mode’ does all the work and there is little left to be achieved by ‘media’.
阐明工作中必然涉及的不同交际任务也将澄清跨学科术语的使用，因为几个“相邻”的讨论​​领域使用的术语与“媒介”的明显意图重叠。例如，与本文关注点特别相关的是“模式”一词。它有时（在某些方面）与“媒介”截然不同，有时则不然。在这两种情况下，我们都发现了类似的“维度降低”，这些降低将现象混为一谈，从而影响分析。一方面，媒介性和跨媒介性领域的讨论通常用媒体或交际形式来表达，即受媒介条件限制的文化实践（参见 Holly，2011）——并且只出现了多模态研究中使用的相对间接或不加批判的“模态”用法；另一方面，在多模态研究中，讨论更多地涉及交流中的各种表达形式、所使用的代码或符号系统，而对媒体概念的提及则相对简单和有限（参见 Norris，2004；Kress，2010；Stöckl，2016），最常见的是上述传统意义上的各种感兴趣的表达形式可能利用的“材料”（Kress and van Leeuwen，2001：21-22）。在第一个取向中，“媒体”完成了所有的工作，“模式”无论什么，都几乎无能为力；在第二个取向中，“模式”完成了所有的工作，“媒体”几乎无能为力。

In both fields we then find almost identical debates concerning whether situations involving mono-modality/mono-mediality can
在这两个领域，我们发现了几乎相同的争论，即涉及单模态性/单媒介性的情况是否可以
exist at all (generally now answered in the negative), whether the sole existence of multi-medial/multimodal situations precludes the existence of individual media/modes (still openly discussed), whether the choice of media/modes does more than simply provide a wrapper or container for content (generally now answered positively), whether or to what extent the restriction to single media/modes pursues a political agenda (also now generally considered to be the case), and just how it is that genuine combinations of media/modes appear to produce ‘more’ than simple juxtapositions of media/modes. These and further parallels can be found by comparing, for example, the media account of Schröter (2011) (and the references provided there) and the modality accounts of Kress and van Leeuwen (2001) and Kress (2010).
是否存在（现在一般都给予否定的回答），多媒体/多模态情境的存在是否排除了单个媒体/模式的存在（仍在公开讨论中），媒体/模式的选择是否不仅仅是为内容提供包装或容器（现在一般都给予肯定的回答），对单一媒体/模式的限制是否或在多大程度上追求政治议程（现在也普遍认为是这样的），以及真正的媒体/模式组合为何似乎比简单的媒体/模式并置产生“更多”的东西。例如，可以通过比较 Schröter (2011) 的媒体描述（及其提供的参考文献）和 Kress and van Leeuwen (2001) 和 Kress (2010) 的模态描述来发现这些和进一步的相似之处。

Despite these parallels, there is a marked lack of communication across the two orientations. As Elleström characterizes the situation:
尽管存在这些相似之处，但这两种倾向之间明显缺乏沟通。正如 Elleström 所描述的那样：
“There are seldom cross-references between the two research fields of intermedial and multimodal studies and the notions of intermediality and multimodality are surprisingly seldom related to each other.” (Elleström, 2010b: 13)
“跨媒介研究和多模态研究这两个研究领域之间很少有交叉引用，而且跨媒介性和多模态性的概念令人惊讶地很少相互关联。”（Elleström，2010b：13）

Elleström offers several reasons why this might be the case, including the rather different disciplinary origins of the two areas of concern: the work he discusses focusing on the concepts of media and mediality has generally had origins in literary studies, whereas work engaging with characterizing how diverse multimodal expressive resources are deployed together commonly draws more explicitly on linguistic and semiotic foundations for both its theoretical frameworks and its methodologies. But the lack of communication weakens both sides.
Elleström 给出了几个原因来解释这种情况，包括这两个关注领域的学科起源相当不同：他讨论的关注媒体和媒介性概念的工作通常起源于文学研究，而描述如何将多种多模态表达资源部署在一起的工作通常更明确地借鉴语言学和符号学基础，作为其理论框架和方法论。但缺乏沟通削弱了双方。

The terms ‘mode’ and ‘media’ are in fact far from synonymous. Although the tasks discussed for ‘media’ in media studies (construed broadly) often overlap with the tasks and obligations carried by the term ‘mode’ in multimodality studies, specific readings of ‘medium’ and ‘mode’ have gained currency within the specific communities that are not generally transferrable across community borders without danger of confusion. Indeed, the entire state of affairs is a generalisation of the situation in which media studies have tended to ‘forget’ about language, while language studies have tended to ‘forget’ about medium (cf. Jäger, 2000). This leads to significant points of leverage and potential triangulation being missed. In contrast, identifying the broad areas of congruence across fields is important because those areas are indicative of semiotic fault lines that need to be addressed regardless of the terminological assignments made. Revealing those fault lines in a manner that is analytically productive constitutes the principal motivation for working here with a more foundational semiotic orientation that precedes hypostatizations in terms of either ‘media’ or ‘mode’.
事实上，“模式”和“媒体”这两个术语远非同义词。尽管媒体研究中讨论的“媒体”的任务（广义上）通常与多模态研究中术语“模式”所承担的任务和义务重叠，但“媒介”和“模式”的特定解读在特定社区中已经流行起来，而这些解读通常无法跨越社区边界而不引起混淆。事实上，整个事态是对媒体研究倾向于“忘记”语言，而语言研究倾向于“忘记”媒介（参见 Jäger，2000）的情况的概括。这导致错过了重要的杠杆点和潜在的三角测量。相比之下，确定跨领域的广泛一致性领域很重要，因为这些领域表明了无论进行何种术语分配都需要解决的符号断层线。以分析性富有成效的方式揭示这些断层线构成了在此工作的主要动机，该工作采用更基础的符号学取向，先于“媒体”或“模式”方面的实体化。

There are also further accounts that can be placed on a more intermediate position between ‘mediality’ and ‘multimodality’ studies, typically combining both semiotic and medial concerns. For example, (particularly German) media linguistics has long addressed the fact that media readily draw on constellations of differing signifying practices, such as speech and (possibly moving) images in news discourse (Holly, 2016) or images and text in journalistic texts, political texts, advertisements and so on (cf. Straßner, 2002; Stöckl, 2004a; Meier, 2014); an introduction to accounts addressing text-image relations is given in Bateman (2014b). Such work overlaps with work on communication anchored in reception studies as well (e.g., Holsanova, 2008; Bucher et al., 2010).
还有一些解释可以放在“媒介性”和“多模态性”研究之间的中间位置，通常结合符号学和媒介学的关注点。例如，（特别是德国的）媒体语言学长期以来一直在研究这样一个事实：媒体很容易利用不同的符号实践组合，例如新闻话语中的语音和（可能移动的）图像（Holly，2016）或新闻文本、政治文本、广告等中的图像和文本（参见Straßner，2002；Stöckl，2004a；Meier，2014）；Bateman（2014b）介绍了关于文本-图像关系的解释。这类工作也与接受研究中的传播工作重叠（例如，Holsanova，2008；Bucher 等人，2010）。

Although beneficial, the openness in media linguistics to considerations of signifying practices that draw on diverse forms of
虽然媒体语言学对借鉴各种形式的符号实践的考虑是有益的，但
expression (speech, image, gesture and so on), and their occurrence in particular medial contexts, has not to date led to solutions for the problems of how to define media, or of how to define modes, and even less of how to combine them. Discussions of specific cases, on the one hand, and attempts at general frameworks, on the other, are separated by a considerable distance in abstraction that makes empirically motivated progress difficult. Discussions of general frameworks either remain philosophical in nature (e.g., Krämer, 2008; Fohrmann, 2010; Jäger, 2015), or have tended to fall back on classifications of text types, sometimes generalized as communicative forms, in terms of matrices of ‘distinctive features’.
表达（语音、图像、手势等）及其在特定媒体语境中的出现，迄今为止尚未解决如何定义媒体或如何定义模式的问题，更不用说如何将它们结合起来。一方面讨论具体案例，另一方面尝试建立一般框架，两者在抽象上相差甚远，这使得以经验为动机的进展变得困难。一般框架的讨论要么本质上仍然是哲学性的（例如，Krämer，2008；Fohrmann，2010；Jäger，2015），要么倾向于依靠文本类型的分类，有时被概括为交流形式，以“独特特征”矩阵的形式。

Such classificatory approaches continue a more ‘bottom-up’ method long employed in text linguistics, in which the occurrence or non-occurrence of particular linguistic features was explored as a means of distinguishing text types (Sandig, 1972). As text linguistics expanded its scope to include combinations of language and other expressive forms, the method was similarly extended to address ‘texts’ drawing on multiple semiotic systems, taking in properties related to distinct ‘media’ as well. Medial properties here often span both material aspects and situational characteristics, thus in turn continuing and extending an even longer tradition of exploring classifications of communicative social contexts (cf. Hymes, 1967; Gregory and Carrol, 1978; van Dijk, 2008).
这种分类方法延续了文本语言学中长期采用的一种更“自下而上”的方法，其中探索特定语言特征的出现或不出现作为区分文本类型的一种手段（Sandig，1972 年）。随着文本语言学的范围扩大到包括语言和其他表达形式的组合，该方法也同样扩展到处理基于多种符号系统的“文本”，同时还吸收了与不同“媒体”相关的属性。这里的媒体属性通常涵盖物质方面和情境特征，从而继续和扩展了探索交流社会背景分类的更悠久的传统（参见 Hymes，1967 年；Gregory 和 Carrol，1978 年；van Dijk，2008 年）。

Brinker (1985: 126), for example, proposes five principal media - face-to-face communication, telephone, radio, television and written text, with subsequent classifications incorporating and attempting to distinguish an ever increasing range of medial forms. Other lists of categorizations are of course possible and have been attempted from a variety of perspectives (cf., e.g., Clüver, 2007; Rajewsky, 2005; Helbig, 2008); many are usefully discussed and themselves classified in Jäger (2015). One of the most recent and extensive is presented by Schmitz (2016), an extract of which is shown translated in Table 1. Schmitz also presents tables highlighting common combinations of ‘modes’ in different media, such as ‘presentation with visual support’, etc.; others have pulled out properties of communicative situations and the materiality involved more - for example, focusing on whether the interactants can see one another, how many there are, whether feedback or responses are possible and so on, i.e., as resources for ‘constructing interaction’ considered in the most general terms (cf. Martin, 1992: 511-515).
例如，Brinker (1985: 126) 提出了五种主要媒体——面对面交流、电话、广播、电视和书面文本，随后的分类纳入并试图区分越来越多的媒体形式。当然还有其他分类列表，而且人们从各种角度进行了尝试（例如，参见 Clüver，2007；Rajewsky，2005；Helbig，2008）；Jäger (2015) 对其中的许多分类进行了有益的讨论，并对其进行了分类。Schmitz (2016) 提出了最新和最广泛的一种分类，其中的摘录如表 1 所示。Schmitz 还提供了表格，重点介绍了不同媒体中“模式”的常见组合，例如“带有视觉支持的呈现”等；另一些人则提取了交流情境的属性和更多涉及的物质性——例如，关注互动者是否可以看到对方，有多少人，是否可以反馈或回应等等，即，从最一般的角度来看待“构建互动”的资源（参见 Martin，1992：511-515）。

Categorization matrices of these kinds exhibit several classes of problems, as Schmitz himself admits. As more specific communicative situations are examined, the number of features multiplies and there are few criteria proposed for deciding on which features will be relevant and which not. Holly (2011) also notes this lack of precision and the fact that distinct communicative situations may consequently be grouped together unless further features are explicitly introduced just to distinguish them. For example, to distinguish the medially distinct communicative form of ‘book’ from ‘newspaper’, a system may need to introduce a somewhat arbitrary feature such as ‘periodic publication’. Providing more organization for the features that may be drawn upon is therefore also seen as necessary. Holly (2011: 115) consequently distinguishes three broad classes of features: (i) ‘modes and codes’, already combining sensory channels and semiotic systems; (ii) the structuring of the communicative space in terms of co-presence and (the possibility of) turn-taking; and (iii) temporal organization. Several other strategies for generalizing across features have been followed such as Stöckl’s (2016) distribution of phenomena according to the syntax-semantics-pragmatics division introduced by Morris (1938), or Schmitz’s and Elleström’s direct adoption of Peircean categories such as icon-index-symbol (Pierce, 1931-1958: 2.203204, 5.72-76). I will return particularly to this latter approach in more detail below.
施密茨本人也承认，这类分类矩阵存在几类问题。随着对更具体的交流情境的研究，特征的数量也成倍增加，而且很少有标准来决定哪些特征相关、哪些不相关。Holly (2011) 也注意到了这种缺乏精确性的情况，以及不同的交流情境可能会被归为一类，除非明确引入更多特征来区分它们。例如，为了区分“书籍”和“报纸”这种媒介上不同的交流形式，系统可能需要引入一个有点随意的特征，如“定期出版物”。因此，为可能利用的特征提供更多的组织也被视为必要。Holly (2011: 115) 因此区分了三类广泛的特征：(i)“模式和代码”，已经结合了感觉通道和符号系统；(ii) 从共存和轮流（可能性）方面构建交流空间；以及（iii）时间组织。其他一些跨特征概括的策略也被采用，例如 Stöckl（2016）根据 Morris（1938）引入的句法-语义-语用学划分对现象的分布，或 Schmitz 和 Elleström 直接采用 Peirce 的类别，例如图标-索引-符号（Pierce，1931-1958：2.203204，5.72-76）。我将在下文中更详细地讨论后一种方法。