This article reports reearch that attempts to characterize what is powerful about digital multimodal texts. Building from recent theoretical work on understanding the workings and implications of multimodal communication, the authors call for a continuing empirical investigation into the roles that digital multimodal texts play in real-world contexts, and they offer one example of how such investigations might be approached. Drawing on data from the practice of multimedia digital storytelling, specifically a piece titled "Lyfe-N-Rhyme," created by Oakland, California, artist Randy Young (accessible at http://www.oaklanddusty.org/videos.php), the authors detail the method and results of a finegrained multimodal analysis, revealing semiotic relationships between and among different, copresent modes. It is in these relationships, the authors argue, that the expressive power of multimodality resides. © 2005 Sage Publications.
