IDENTIFYING, CONSTRUING, AND BRIDGING OVER MEDIA BORDERS

Abstract

The article will center on the necessary but always problematic notion of media borders, which has since long been scrutinized by intermedial studies. My initial observation is that it is impossible to navigate in one’s material and mental surrounding if one does not categorize objects and phenomena; without categorizations everything would be a blur – difficult to grasp and to explain. However, categorization requires borders, and borders can and should always be disputed. The area of communication is not an exception: on one hand it is necessary to somehow categorize media into types, and on the other hand it is not evident how these categorizations should be made. My aim is not to argue in favor of or against certain ways of classifying communicative media, but to try to explain some of the functions and limitations of media borders. I argue, in brief, that there are different types of media borders and hence different types of media types; if these differences are not recognized, the understanding of media categorization will remain confused. Whereas some media borders are relatively stable, others are more subject to change; therefore, media borders can be understood to be both identified and construed. However, in the end virtually all media borders can be bridged over through our cross-modal cognitive capacities. Keywords: media borders, media types, categorization, intermediality, multimodality, cross-modality, iconicity.

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