Multimodality across Communicative Settings, Discourse Domains and Genres


Book Description

This volume focuses on multimodality in various communicative settings, with special attention to how non-verbal elements reinforce and add meaning to verbal expressions. The first part of the book explores issues related to the use of multimodal resources in educational interactions and English language classroom teaching, also involving learners with disabilities. The second part, on the other hand, investigates multimodality as a key component of communication that takes place in different specialized domains and genres. The book reflects a variety of methodological approaches that are grounded in both quantitative and qualitative techniques. These include multimodal discourse analysis, multimodal transcription, and multimodal annotation software capable of representing the interplay of different semiotic modes, such as speech, intonation, direction of gaze, facial expressions, gestures and spatial positioning of interlocutors. The research collected here highlights the increasingly important role of multimodality in communication across different genres and communicative contexts, and offers new perspectives on how to exploit multimodal resources to enhance the learning of English for both general and specific purposes.




Analyzing Multimodality in Specialized Discourse Settings


Book Description

Contemporary society has witnessed radical changes in the field of communications in terms of how messages and meanings are disseminated. Digitalization and the Internet have signalled an exponential rise in the circulation of multimodal texts in which different semiotic resources are orchestrated together to construct meaning in all areas of social life, across languages and cultures, and in diverse specialized discourse domains. This has foregrounded the need to examine the semiotic functions, affordances, and issues at stake in a range of multimodal discourse forms, while simultaneously highlighting the importance of critical multimodal literacy in audiences and learners. This volume develops and extends pioneering research on the intersection between multimodality and specialized discourse. Eight newly commissioned studies offer innovative perspectives on multimodal research methodologies and applications in a variety of ESP (English for Specific Purposes) contexts for practitioners and scholars alike. The volume offers a glimpse at future directions in this dynamic and ever-evolving area of investigation focusing on the synergy between verbal and non-verbal modes of communication in the digital age. Each chapter explores an original area of application: academic, economic, scientific, marketing, legal, medical, political, and tourism. The contributors approach multimodality from a range of theoretical and methodological viewpoints including synchronic and diachronic corpus-based and corpus-aided studies, critical discourse analysis, and systemic functional linguistics. Analytical tools such as multimodal (critical) discourse analysis, multimodal transcription, and multimodal annotation software capable of representing the interplay of different semiotic modes - speech, intonation, direction of gaze, facial expressions, gesturing, and spatial positioning of interlocutors - are employed. The diversity of research strands contained in the volume illustrates just some of the vast areas of multimodal knowledge dissemination that are still unmapped. As a cornerstone of communication, multimodality needs exploring in all its facets. These contributions aim to further that cause.




Discourse and Technology


Book Description

The overarching theme of Discourse and Technology is cutting-edge in the field of linguistics: multimodal discourse. This volume opens up a discussion among discourse analysts and others in linguistics and related fields about the two-fold impact of new communication technologies: The impact on how discourse data is collected, transcribed, and analyzed—and the impact that these technologies are having on social interaction and discourse. As inexpensive tape recorders allowed the field to move beyond text, written or printed language, to capture talk—discourse as spoken language—the information explosion (including cell phones, video recorders, Internet chat rooms, online journals, and the like) has moved those in the field to recognize that all discourse is, in various ways, "multimodal," constructed through speech and gesture, as well as through typography, layout, and the materials employed in the making of texts. The contributors have responded to the expanding scope of discourse analysis by asking five key questions: Why should we study discourse and technology and multimodal discourse analysis? What is the role of the World Wide Web in discourse analysis? How does one analyze multimodal discourse in studies of social actions and interactions? How does one analyze multimodal discourse in educational social interactions? and, How does one use multimodal discourse analyses in the workplace? The vitality of these explorations opens windows onto even newer horizons of discourse and discourse analysis.




Multimodal Literacies Across Digital Learning Contexts


Book Description

This collection critically considers the question of how learning and teaching should be conceived, understood, and approached in light of the changing nature of learning scenarios and new pedagogies in this current age of multimodal digital texts, practices, and communities. The book takes the concept of digital artifacts as being composed of multiple meaning-making semiotic resources, such as visuals, music, and design, as its point of departure to explore how diverse communities interact with these tools and develop and explore their understanding of digital practices in learning contexts. The first section of the volume examines different case studies in which involved participants learn to grapple with the introduction of digital tools for learning in children’s early years of schooling. The second section extends the focus to secondary and higher education settings as digital learning tools grow more complex as do students, parents, and teachers’ interactions with them and the subsequent need for new pedagogies to rethink these multimodal artifacts. A final section reflects on the implications of new multimodal tools, technologies, and pedagogies for teachers, such as on teacher training and community building among educators. In its in-depth look at multimodal approaches to learning as meaning-making in a digital world, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in multimodality, English language teaching, digital communication, and education.




Multimodality Studies in International Contexts


Book Description

This collection responds to the need for theoretically informed and methodologically grounded empirical research on the global transformations in multimodal human communication and social practices in light of recent widespread change. The volume highlights the need to expand on the established approaches--Social Semiotics, Multimodal Discourse Analysis, and Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis--by complementing them with other analytical frameworks to better understand the impact of unprecedented global challenges, such as Covid-19, on the way humans communicate and make use of meaning-making resources. Bringing together established and emergent scholars from a variety of geographical, cultural, and linguistic contexts, the collection presents studies from both the Global North and Global South, including South Africa, Latin America, Brazil, and the Caribbean, to showcase new perspectives in multimodality research. This innovative book will be of interest to students and scholars in multimodality, social semiotics, and discourse analysis.




Multicultural Health Translation, Interpreting and Communication


Book Description

Multicultural Health Translation, Interpreting and Communication presents the latest research in health translation resource development and evaluation, community and professional health interpreting, and the communication of health risks to multicultural populations. Covering a variety of research topics in empirical health translation and interpreting, this advanced resource will be helpful for research students and academics of translation and interpreting studies who have an interest in health issues, particularly in multicultural and multilingual societies. This edited volume brings in interdisciplinary expertise from areas such as translation studies, community interpreting, health communication and education, nursing, medical anthropology and psychology, and will be of interest to healthcare professionals, language services in multilingual societies and researchers interested in communication between healthcare providers and users.




Current Trends in EMI and Multimodality in Higher Education


Book Description

Looking at both English Medium Instruction (EMI) and multimodality in higher education, this edited volume bridges the gap between the two contexts by offering various new insights into fundamentals in multilingual education, EMI discourse and current teaching practices in internationalised contexts. Current demands in communication, especially in higher-education contexts, require examining EMI from a multimodal perspective with the aim of giving explicit attention to modern discourse practices. The contributors reflect on the principles guiding EMI and multimodality and their application in higher education using both practical examples and data-driven evidences. They discuss EMI multimodal discourse from an empirical perspective to unveil communicative practices in internationalised higher-education contexts; and exemplify classroom applications and ESP and EAP pedagogical practices that promote multimodal competence in higher education. The contributors provide solid theoretical foundations, key principles, research evidence and pedagogical implications that inform current methodologies and practices for EMI, ESP and EAP, as well as multimodality in higher education. This volume on EMI and multimodality in higher education will have broad appeal for researchers worldwide from various fields of expertise within education and applied linguistics.




Multimodality


Book Description

This textbook provides the first foundational introduction to the practice of analysing multimodality, covering the full breadth of media and situations in which multimodality needs to be a concern. Readers learn via use cases how to approach any multimodal situation and to derive their own specifically tailored sets of methods for conducting and evaluating analyses. Extensive references and critical discussion of existing approaches from many disciplines and in each of the multimodal domains addressed are provided. The authors adopt a problem-oriented perspective throughout, showing how an appropriate foundation for understanding multimodality as a phenomenon can be used to derive strong methodological guidance for analysis as well as supporting the adoption and combination of appropriate theoretical tools. Theoretical positions found in the literature are consequently always related back to the purposes of analysis rather than being promoted as valuable in their own right. By these means the book establishes the necessary theoretical foundations to engage productively with today’s increasingly complex combinations of multimodal artefacts and performances of all kinds.




Multimodality


Book Description

Gunther Kress, a pioneer in the field of multimodality and the co-author of the bestselling Reading Images, produces a comprehensive theoretical framework for the study of the topic providing sample analyses and suggestions for further reading.




Designing Learning with Digital Technologies


Book Description

This book offers a multimodal perspective on how to design meaningful learning experiences with digital technologies. Digital education is of increasing importance in today’s digital society and the editors bring together international thought-leaders and well-established academics across geographical regions to explore the topic. The book addresses the need to design learning with digital technologies, especially in a post-pandemic environment where blended learning has become ubiquitous. The book is organised around five themes: designing learning, digital learning designs, digital learning with embodied teaching, digital learning interactions, and digital multimodal literacies. The chapters focus on digital technologies as multimodal semiotic resources and the educational implication of each theme is drawn out from illustrative cases across contexts of learning. Essential reading for researchers and postgraduate students, this book offers state-of-the-art thinking on how educators can design new learning experiences for students through the meaningful and effective use of digital technologies. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.