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Objects, Frozen Actions, and Identity: A Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis
Abstract
In this article, we take a multimodal (inter)action analytical approach, showing how objects in everyday life are identity telling. As social actors surround themselves with objects, multiple actions from producing the objects to acquiring and placing them in the environment are embedded within. Here, we investigate examples from two different ethnographic studies, using the notion of frozen actions. One of our examples comes from a five-month long ethnographic study on identity production of three vegetarians in Thailand (Makboon, forthcoming); and the other example comes from a four-month long ethnographic study of three working parents on the East coast of North America (Norris, 2006, 2008). We illustrate the frozen actions embedded in particular objects and argue that the analysis of frozen actions allows us to partially understand how identity is produced and experienced by social actors in everyday life.
... FAs are HLAs performed by social actors prior to the HLA currently being performed and that are now entailed in disembodied modes, for example, within printed material, layout of an environment or material objects ( Norris, 2004 ). Norris and Makboon (2015 ), for example, illustrate the FA of raising children as evoked by a selfmade photo calendar present in an office and telling of the participant's identity of a working mother. ...
... Thus, objects become meditational means when social actors use them in social interaction, to display aspects of identity (Lane 2009) or for meaning-making in social life. Objects can therefore be seen as a result of action, both through physical process that created them and when social actors make use of material objects to do identity work (Norris and Makboon 2015). Norris (2004) our attention to how objects can be seen as frozen actions because they are the material results of social actions. ...
This chapter investigates the relationship between religion and language maintenance and shift by drawing on two types of data from a Kven community in Northern Norway—oral narratives and material objects. In the oppression of the Kven, the Lutheran State Church was important for the promotion of the Norwegian language. In contrast, the lay movement Læstadianism served as an arena for religious practices where the Kven language was used as a Lingua Franca for the Kven and Sámi populations. The role of Læstadianism can be seen as a reversal of values (Kristiansen in Kvenenes historie og kultur [The history and culture of the Kven]. Seminarrapport. Ed. Helge Guttormsen, Nord-Troms historielag, 1998): national authorities saw the State Church as important for Norwegian values, whereas Læstadianism emphasised the values of the minority group. This reversal of values was also physically manifested, for instance in style of clothing. Both language and material objects become meditational means (Scollon and Scollon in Nexus analysis: Discourse and the emerging internet. Routledge, London, 2004) when social actors use them in social interaction, to display aspects of identity (Lane in Vis Commun 8:449–468, 2009) or for meaning-making in social life (Lane in Language Standardisation as Frozen Mediated Actions—The Materiality of Language Standardization, Routledge, 2017). The narratives shed light on how individuals position themselves vis-à-vis the languages used in their community, and the analysis shows that the Kven language in informal religious settings is seen as associated with authenticity and belonging.KeywordsLanguage maintenance and shiftSociology of Language and ReligionIdentityAuthenticityBelongingMediational means
... Multimodal (inter)action analysis is thus a coherent and comprehensive research framework for the analysis of qualitative video-based data. 2 All the pieces in this framework fit together (Norris 2012;Pirini 2014b), allowing the researcher to build a coherent picture of whatever human action, interaction or identity is being studied. In this way, we have made strides in examining space and place or children's acquisition (Geenen 2013;Geenen 2017Geenen , 2018; identity (Norris 2005(Norris , 2007(Norris , 2008(Norris , 2011Norris and Makboon 2015;Matelau-Doherty and Norris 2021); video conferences (Norris 2017a;Norris and Pirini 2017); business coaching, high school tutoring and intersubjectivity (Pirini 2013(Pirini , 2014a(Pirini , 2016, to name but a few areas in which the framework has been used. What we at the AUT Multimodal Research Centre are finding is that with a coherent framework such as MIA, there is much potential to discover new insight and knowledge about any kind of human action, interaction, and identity. ...
This paper presents a concise introduction to Multimodal (inter)action analysis (MIA), which began to be developed in the early 2000s in tandem with technological advances for visual qualitative research. By now, MIA has grown into a fully-fledged research framework, including multimodal philosophy, theory, method and methodology for the study of human action, interaction and identity. With systematic phases from data collection to transcription (including transcription conventions) and data analysis, this framework allows researchers to work in a data-driven and replicable manner moving past common interpretive paradigms (Norris 2019, 2020).
... Also, some mediated actions are better understood through knowing the participants and understanding the discourses that contribute to their identity. Norris and Makboon (2015) explicate that "identity telling frozen actions cannot simply be read off of objects without knowing the social actor(s) that these belong to" (p.44). This holistic approach contributes to a positive relationship between researcher and participant. ...
This thesis examines the construction of hybrid and fluid ethnic identity elements as produced by Māori and Pacific female artists. Ethnic identity studies within New Zealand reveal different types of ethnic identities, and although there is research being conducted into hybrid and fluid Māori and Pacific identity elements, no studies have been done examining the construction of these identities through mediated action. This thesis attempts to fill this gap.
Using video ethnography and socio-linguistic interviews, data were collected and analysed utilising multimodal (inter)action analysis (MIA) as the theoretical and methodological framework. Vertical identity production and site of engagement are analytical tools within MIA that allow for the study of the intersection between discourses and mediated actions performed by social actors. These analytical tools were applied to interview and video transcripts selected from the data, following a systematic process of data cataloguing.
Analysis of the data is presented in three chapters which show the ethnic and creative identity production of the participants as constructed through the central, intermediary and outer layers of discourse. The first analysis chapter demonstrates the way the participants create art by blending traditional and contemporary features and diverse knowledge, in turn constructing their immediate ethnic and creative identity elements. This analysis is compared to the way the participants verbalise these identity elements within their interviews. The second analysis chapter examines the way experiences of exclusion and inclusion from within their networks shape their continuous ethnic and
creative identity elements. The third analysis chapter explores moments of exclusion and inclusion but within larger communities such as mainstream New Zealand, and their ethnic communities. It also illustrates the way in which the participants’ art creates inclusion and shapes the general ethnic and creative identity development of other social actors.
Following this, wider discourses and practices are examined using the site of engagement as the analytical tool. This chapter demonstrates the way in which wider discourses such as colonial, superiority/inferiority and racism discourse intersect with practices such as superiority/inferiority, gratitude, and marginalisation and with the mediated actions performed by the participants. This analysis highlights the negative impact these discourses and practices can have on ethnic identity construction for Māori and Pacific social actors. To this end, numerous recommendations are made within the conclusion with the intention of changing these wider discourses and practices.
This thesis contributes to knowledge in the area of Māori and Pacific identity studies by utilising multimodal (inter)action analysis to study identity production. It also contributes to the theoretical and methodological framework of multimodal (inter)action analysis.
... printed material, layout of an environment) or material objects (Norris, 2004). For instance, Norris & Makboon (2015) illustrate the higher-level action of raising children as embedded in a selfmade photo calendar present in a web-designer's office and telling of her identity of a working mother. ...
Online language teaching is gaining momentum worldwide and an expanding body of research analyses online pedagogical interactions. However, few studies have explored experienced online teachers' practices in videoconferencing particularly while giving instructions, which are key to success in task-based language teaching (Markee, 2015). Adopting multimodal (inter)action analysis (Norris, 2004, 2019) to investigate the multimodal construction of instructions in a single case study, we examine instruction-giving as a social practice demonstrated in a specific site of engagement (a synchronous online lesson recorded for research purposes). Drawing on the higher-level actions (instruction-giving fragments) we have identified elsewhere (Satar & Wigham, 2020), in this paper we analyse the lower-level actions (modes) that comprise these higher-level actions, specifically focusing on the print mode (task resource sheets, URLs, text chat, and online collaborative writing spaces) wherein certain higher-level actions become frozen. Our findings are unique in depicting the modal complexity of sharing task resources in synchronous online teaching due to semiotic misalignment and semiotic lag that precludes the establishment of a completely shared interactional space. We observe gaze shifts as the sole indicator for learners that the teacher is multitasking between different higher-level actions. Further research is needed to fully understand the interactional features of online language teaching via videoconferencing to inform teacher training policy and practice.
... Nexus analysis maintains that a social action intersects at three discourse aggregates: the discourse in place (e.g. a narration of a monument in a schoolscape including the text on the monument); the interaction order (e.g. a conversation during a walking interview);, and the historical body (e.g. the life experiences of the social actors that might emerge during that interview) ( Scollon & Scollon, 2004 , pp. 18-23). Signs and objects in the material world are the result of someone's previous social action and this notion is conceptualized in the notion of the frozen action ( Norris, 2004( Norris, , 2019Norris & Makboon, 2015 ). Frozen actions range in meaning from moving an object onto a table to the emplacement of a public sign or memorial. ...
The present study reports on the geosemiotics (Scollon & Scollon, 2003) of a Thai University. Walking interview tours (Lou, 2017; Stroud & Jegels, 2014a) of Thammasat University’s Tha Prachan campus were conducted. These interviews reveal how students narrate and take stances towards the geosemiotic artifacts that are found on their campus. The purpose of the study was twofold: 1) to gain an understanding of how students react to the geosemiotics on campus, and 2) to get a sense of their understanding of Thai history. For the latter the university has been the site of several historical events pertaining to Thailand’s spotty relationship with democracy, most notably the Thammasat massacre, and much of this history has been repressed (Huebner, 2017; Winichakul, 2002, 2020). Using the geosemiotic framework to discuss the multimodal make-up of this university’s signs and space, I illustrate how the narrations that emerged during walking interviews serve as lenses through which we are offered a glimpse of how students are socialized to think about the material environment of their campus. We can observe how students take different stances to the signs and places of their campus as well as Thailand’s history. Such narrations reveal traces of socialization on the one hand and the emergence of an affective regime of reverence on the other (Wee & Goh, 2019). The findings contribute to the growing body of literature on schoolscapes in multilingual educational settings (Gorter, 02018; Gorter & Cenoz, 2015).
... One way to reconcile the mediated action with the semiotics of representation is through the notion of frozen action. The frozen action (Norris 2019, Sigrid andBoonyalakha 2015) articulates the idea that signs and objects, in this case commercial videos, are the result of someone's actions. While we were not present to view the filming and editing that took place to develop these videos, viewing them as frozen actions allows us to perceive them as the outcome of likely a series of mediated actions. ...
This paper offers two contributions to the multimodal discourse analysis of tourism advertising videos. First it shows how Thainess has been resemiotized to be accessible to non-Thai people and second it illustrates how the mediated action can be used as a unit of analysis to analyze advertising videos. Thainess has been a national identity strategy that has evolved into numerous polysemic. In this discussion five discursive stances to Thainess are identified: Thainess as a national identity, Thainess as a form other-ness, the Thai-ification of Thai people, Thainess as popular culture, and Thainess as commodified consumption. The analysis uses an integrative framework based in mediated discourse theory, multimodal discourse analysis and social semiotics to discuss and analyze the discursive stances of Thainess that emerge in two videos from the 2015 Discover Thainess campaign. Using the mediated action as the unit of analysis the multimodal features of Thainess that emerge from these videos are analyzed. Through this analysis Thainess is shown to be resemiotized in the videos where it was once inaccessible to westerners, the Thainess represented in the videos has been resemiotized to be both accessible and authentic to western tourists.
... Such actions have been assigned to ordinary objects by social actors and, by converging with practices and discourses, "[allow] us to partially understand how identity is produced and experienced by social actors in everyday life" (Norris and Makboon 2015: 43). Norris and Makboon (2015) theorise objects and artefacts are seen as "parts of modes" that are "durable due to their materiality when compared to other communicative modes such as gaze, gesture, or posture" (Norris and Makboon 2015: 45). By virtue of their permanency in the social actor's environment, the frozen actions embedded in those objects persist, thereby allowing for an identity production that is durable and has a degree of permanence. ...
In this article, we explore the functions that tattoos worn by women with breast cancer or endometriosis have in constructing identities for the wearer and conceptualise the respective illness. Drawing on previous literature on multimodal communication, tattoos and illness, we analyse a sample of 59 different tattoos for their ideational function in constructing identities. A social semiotic analysis shows that lexemes, images, type fonts and intertextuality work together to construct dominant identities for the women wearing the tattoos: as a fighter or warrior, or as a sufferer. The first, metaphoric, identity shows hybrid gendering and constructs the illness as an adversary, while the identity as sufferer often has religious overtones, particularly for breast cancer tattoos. Subversive identities centre on despair or rationality, and as such constitute an alternative to social imperatives of either staying strong and fighting the illness or accepting one’s fate. We close by discussing in how far the tattoos do justice to the complexity of living with an illness and how our research shows the need to include visual stimuli in medical consultations.
... Pragmatics & Society 9 (4): 519-546. Geenen, J., Norris, S., and Makboon, B. (2015). Multimodal discourse analysis. ...
... Extending the central focus on action, Norris (2004Norris ( , 2011 and Norris and Macboon (2015) similarly articulate the ways in which objects and entities may have embedded in their materiality, frozen actions. Frozen actions refer to chains of lower-and higher-level actions which are embedded in the materiality of objects and artefacts insofar as social actors have an aptitude for perceiving such actions given material specificities in particular spaces. ...
This article provides a preliminary answer to exactly why video-conferencing is evaluated as better than traditional telephony for long-distance familial interaction by allocating analytical attention to the showing of objects during interaction. While it is acknowledged that ‘showing’ constitutes an interactive move less contingent on linguistic maturation, more importantly, the showing of objects, artefacts or entities during video-conferencing interactions exemplifies an agentive and volitional production of identity elements on behalf of young children. Thus, while some have pointed to shortcomings of conversation-like activities mediated by video-conferencing in favour for more activity-driven tasks, I make a case for drawing upon pre-existing components of the material surround as a means to more comprehensively and longitudinally engage younger children in video-conferencing interaction.
... Research in multimodal analysis continues to produce new tools and methods. For instance, Norris and Makboon (2015) developed "the notion of frozen actions" to investigate the use of objects in identity construction and O'Halloran (2015) reported on a new tool for multimodal analysis of video interactions, Multimodal Analysis Video, which has facilities for importing, viewing, transcribing and annotating videos. CALL researchers interested in exploring online multimodal language learner interactions need to follow the outcomes of research in other fields, and test the applicability and efficiency of their tools and methods to help understand multimodal online language learner interactions. ...
Online language learning and teaching in multimodal contexts has been identified as one of the key research areas in computer-aided learning (CALL) (Lamy, 2013; White, 2014). 1 This paper aims to explore meaning-making in online language learner interactions via desktop videoconferencing (DVC) and in doing so illustrate multimodal transcription and analysis as well as the application of theoretical frameworks from other fields. Recordings of learner DVC interactions and interviews are qualitatively analysed within a case study methodology. The analysis focuses on how semiotic resources available in DVC are used for meaning-making, drawing on semiotics, interactional sociolinguistics, nonverbal communication, multimodal interaction analysis and conversation analysis. The findings demonstrate the use of contextualization cues, five codes of the body, paralinguistic elements for emotional expression, gestures and overlapping speech in meaning-making. The paper concludes with recommendations for teachers and researchers using and investigating language learning and teaching in multimodal contexts.
Multimodal (inter)action analysis offers a powerful and robust methodology for the study of action and interaction between social actors, their environment, and the objects and tools within. Yet its implementation in the analysis of synchronous multimodal online data sets, e.g. (inter)actions via videoconferencing, is limited. Drawing on our research in understanding teacher-learner (inter)actions in instruction-giving fragments in synchronous multimodal online language lessons, we describe and illustrate the ways in which we adapted and extended some of the methodological and analytical tools. These include (1) the use of a grounded theory approach in delineating and identifying higher-level actions, (2) the embodiment and disembodiment of frozen actions, (3) electronic print mode, (4) semiotic lag, (5) semiotic (mis)alignment, (6) modal density (mis)alignment, and (7) how modal density can be achieved by brisk modal shifts in addition to through modal intensity and complexity. We conclude by a call for further educational research in online teaching platforms using the framework to have richer understandings of the (inter)actions between social actors with particular roles and identities (teachers-learners), their environment, and the objects and tools within, which bring their “own material properties, feel and techniques of use, affordances and limitations” (Chun, Dorothy, Richard Kern & Bryan Smith. 2016. Technology in language use, language teaching, and language learning. The Modern Language Journal 100. 64–80: 65).
Znanstvena monografija Stanje in perspektive uporabe govornih virov v raziskavah govora predstavlja rezultate prvega leta dela v raziskovalnem projektu Temeljne raziskave za razvoj govornih virov in tehnologij za slovenski jezik (J7-4642) kot tudi rezultate raziskovalcev, ki se ukvarjajo z govorom v drugih raziskovalnih projektih, s skupnim glavnim ciljem strateškega in učinkovitega razvoja prostodostopnih govornih virov. Prispevki izpostavljajo načrte, cilje in izzive ob gradnji govornih virov, in sicer na leksikalni in skladenjski ravni, iščejo rešitve za posebnosti govora na fonetično-fonološki ravni tudi v povezavi s standardi zapisovanja (narečnega) govora. Govor in jezikovna variantnost sta raziskovana kot manifestacija socialne slojevitosti, govorjeni diskurz pa tudi z vidika součinkovanja različnih semiotskih kodov v smislu vzajemnega učinkovanja za tvorjenje smisla sporočila. Z vidika prepletanja prvin govorjenega in pisnega jezika so analizirana izbrana spletna besedila, zanemarjena ni niti vloga govora v gledališki umetnosti.
Maker culture emphasizes informal, networked, self- and peer-led learning, motivated by fun and self-fulfillment, and learning through mistakes. However, studies often describe activities involving a lot of guidance. As guidance may lead to both the process and outcomes influenced by those guiding the activity, it is also important to examine how projects evolve without the supporters' push. We take a nexus analytical approach to explore 1) how teens' background, interactions with others, and available materials and spaces are at play when they shape their ideas and outputs in a collaborative maker project with minimal support, and 2) how these factors can be considered to better support learning in such projects. The work carried out by five teens in a local FabLab was based on peer collaboration within changing apprentice mentor pairs. When they ideated and prototyped for a future school, researchers provided minimal support, mainly online. Without their push, teens quickly modified tasks which both guided and narrowed down their thinking. Their experiences from school environment and the FabLab space served as an inspiration as they designed solutions to overcome current problems in the current school setting or digital fabrication process. When making, they gravitated towards processes they had previous experience of or which they enjoyed, perhaps partly affected by the competing discourses of maker culture and expertise we observed to be present in the FabLab space. While building on existing skillsets, this may leave the potential of novel trajectories and expanding one's skills and competences unexplored. Teens' self-esteem improved as they turned from apprentices to mentors for their peers. This allowed them to process their learning from a different perspective. In general, our results paint a detailed picture of the roles of different participants in a maker project and provide an example of how familiar discourses of education persist in teens' designs. Looking at the project through the lens of Nexus analysis contributes to an increased understanding of the space for action and participants' histories, and interactions on the process, valuable for researchers studying DF and making, and practitioners working in makerspaces and FabLabs with different user groups. On a more practical level, our work contributes to a deeper understanding on how to include teens into non-guided and community-driven maker practices. We provide practical implications on how to support learning in collaborative making projects in informal learning situations, and regarding the role of the different actors and the environment in such situations. We also identify avenues for future research in this area.
Background and aims: This study delves into the dynamic landscape of language education in Chinese private universities, specifically focusing on the application of translanguaging, multimodality, and dialogic teaching to enhance students' literacy development. With English literacy holding paramount importance in the globalized era, junior students in China’s private universities encounter distinct challenges and opportunities. This research investigates the constraints that hinder their literacy competence, examines the efficacy of translanguaging and dialogic pedagogy in bolstering literacy skills, and explores students’ perceptions of their literacy competence and experiences with translanguaging practices. Materials and methods: The study’s significance lies in its potential to shape educational practices and curriculum design within China’s private university context. By harnessing the power of translanguaging, multimodality, and dialogic teaching, this research strives to offer innovative approaches to bolster students’ English literacy proficiency. Results: The findings unravel the intricate interplay between linguistic strategies, instructional techniques, and students’ perceptions, thereby contributing to the creation of effective pedagogical interventions in English literacy education. Conclusion: This research project aims to bridge the gap between theoretical frameworks and practical applications, culminating in actionable insights that resonate with the challenges and aspirations of junior students in Chinese private universities. Through an intricate exploration of language education paradigms, this study ultimately strives to equip students with the linguistic competence and confidence required to thrive in an increasingly interconnected and diverse global society.
This study examines so-called “ironic memes,” a seemingly inscrutable genre of memetic Internet content, as meaningful digital multimodal text. Considering Internet memes’ semiotic construction patterns and their social functions, this study connects these two concerns, asking: How is the provocatively “nonsensical” design of ironic memes organized and connected to the construction of (group) identities online? Adopting a digital ethnographic approach, we employ a combination of multimodal discursive methods in order to jointly analyze semiotic design patterns and the social actions underlying them. The analysis suggests that, despite their nonsensical appearance, ironic memes rely on distinct design strategies that contribute to the construction of (group) identities rooted in digital literacies. Specifically, ironic memes constitute generic hybrids where semiotic practices are associated with personas that are “less literate” in Internet memeing. Our findings indicate that digital literacies can feature as central in the construction of superdiverse identities through digital text-making and text-sharing.
Universities in English speaking countries have been witnessing an increasing number of international faculty who speak English as an international language. However, the universities are mostly guided by the dominant monolingual ideologies and language policies that favor verbal repertoires in standard English even though instructional communication is characteristically multimodal. Against this backdrop, this article focuses on two faculty members in STEM and investigates their instructional interaction. Using multimodal interaction as a theoretical and methodological heuristic, the analysis pays attention to how modes, codes and material objects are ensembled in specific configurations as instructors and students engage in the process of meaning negotiation. The instructors’ instructional practices and perspectives demonstrate the importance of the entanglement of language with diverge semiotic, social and material elements of communication. The findings suggest a need for a broader definition and scope of instructional interaction in STEM.
This thesis comprises three separate studies that together explore how Swedish student teachers construct or produce professional identity in interaction while navigating different institutional and professional instances of teacher education. As a discourse analytical contribution to research on teacher identity, the main theoretical framework is mediated discourse theory (e.g. Scollon 2001a). For data construction and analysis in the studies, different parts of the two related methodologies of nexus analysis (Scollon & Scollon 2004) and multimodal (inter)action analysis (Norris 2011) are employed. Constructed through an ethnographic approach, the interactional data consist of audio and video recordings of interaction in instances from three different components of a Swedish teacher education program: a rhetoric course, a bachelor thesis course in history and teaching placement. Furthermore, the data include observational field notes and interviews, as well as resources used by the participants, primarily written texts.
Taking place early on in teacher education, Study I focuses on student teachers performing oral presentations under the fictitious presumption that they are speaking as teachers. Employing the notion of communicative project (Linell 1998), the empirical aim of the study is to shed light on how student teachers manage institutional affordances and constraints affecting interactional role shifts from student teacher to teacher. In Study II, three student teachers are writing their bachelor theses in the subject of history, and the study focuses on the interactional production of teacher identity of one of the students during seminars. While partly being a methodological study, Study II empirically explores how student teachers interactionally relate to their future profession in an academic disciplinary setting, highlighting which actors and institutions are involved in the production of professional identity. Finally, Study III concentrates on a student teacher during his final teaching placement. Focusing on previous experiences resemiotized as stories, Study III highlights how discourse re-emerging from the historical body (Nishida 1958) can be used in interaction in producing identity.
The results suggest that the production of teacher identity by the student teachers is a co-operative and communicative task, where previous experiences as well as an anticipatory perspective on the teaching profession are important features. The three studies identify different resources that can be used and adapted by students to suit different purposes in professional identity production, described as textual resources, embodied resources, and narrative resources. In turn, the different uses of such resources motivate the need for studying identity in interaction with an approach where ethnographic and sociocultural knowledge is part of the analysis. The creative use of resources in identity production highlights that students use knowledge and experience linked to academic and professional as well as everyday discourse in producing professional identity. Presuming an interest in opportunities for student teachers to develop professional identity during their education, it appears fruitful to reflect upon how potential resources are designed and implemented in teacher education, and how institutional affordances and constraints affect the possibilities of using them.
In this article we introduce this special issue of Multimodal Communication. We briefly describe the founding of the Multimodal Research Centre and the journal Multimodal Communication before introducing each of the articles featured in this issue.
Multimodal interaction analysis is a holistic methodological framework that allows the analyst to integrate the verbal with the nonverbal, and to integrate these with material objects and the environment as they are being used by individuals acting and interacting in the world. In short, multimodal interaction analysis allows a researcher to study real people interacting with others, with technology, and with the environment. The point of view taken in multimodal interaction analysis is that all actions in fact are interactions and that all of these (inter)actions are linked to people (referred to as “social actors” in multimodal interaction analysis)—no matter whether you are investigating the real or the virtual world, someone buying ice cream, or using a software program. Multimodal interaction analysis is carried out through a series of analytical phases and steps. Researchers utilize multimodal transcription conventions and analytical tools, which are theoretically founded, allowing for replicability of analyses and reliability of findings. Multimodal interaction analysis allows the integration of all communicative modes, where communicative modes are defined as systems of mediated actions. In this view, all modes of communication together build one system of communication, which comes about through actions and interactions that people produce. This coherent framework and process of analysis can be taught and learned and is proving useful for research examining what people do, how they communicate, and how they interact.
This concise guide outlines core theoretical and methodological developments of the growing field of Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis.
The volume unpacks the foundational relationship between multimodality and language and the key concepts which underpin the analysis of multimodal action and interaction and the study of multimodal identity. A focused overview of each concept charts its historical development, reviews the essential literature, and outlines its underlying theoretical frameworks and how it links to analytical tools. Norris illustrates the concept in practice via the inclusion of examples and an image-based transcript, table, or graph.
The book provides a succinct overview of the latest research developments in the field of Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis for early career scholars in the field as well as established researchers looking to stay up-to-date on core developments.
Defining and understanding a positive and inclusive Māori or Pacific ethnic identity is difficult. Yet doing so is necessary in order to enhance the wellbeing of Māori and Pacific people in New Zealand. This paper argues that analysing the art of a Māori and Samoan visual artist using frozen actions as the analytical tool, reveals their fluid ethnic identity. Actions such as hanging the art, producing the art and researching the art are embedded as frozen actions in the art itself. These identity telling actions reveal a fluid ethnic identity, a positive and inclusive ethnic identity which combines ideas about the social environment and ethnicity.
By testing a model for analysing identity in interaction, the present article explores how a history student teacher produces social identity in relation to his future profession as a teacher, with an important point of departure being the relationship between the academic and professional aspects of teacher education. This is addressed through an empirical analysis of a student teacher’s identity production in a specific academic setting: a bachelor thesis course. The main body of data consists of audio recordings and video recordings from a group of three student teachers giving feedback on each other’s theses. With respect to methodology, the article employs a model from multimodal (inter)action analysis that focuses on the concept of vertical identity – the notion that identity in interaction is produced in three layers of discourse simultaneously. The results show that the main participant produces the identity of history teacher in an academic setting where such identity production is not encouraged, e.g. by resemiotisising curricula: thus, policy documents can work as a tool when producing teacher identity. This production of identity is done by employing strong agency, which consequently points to the need of a more elaborated discussion on agency in the tested model.
Book of Abstracts of the 6th Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines Conference (CADAAD 2016)
How are identities constructed in discourse? How are national and European identities tied to language and communication? And what role does power have – power in discourse, over discourse and of discourse? This paper seeks to identify and analyse processes of identity construction within Europe and at its boundaries, particularly the diversity of sources and forms of expression in several genres and contexts. It draws on media debates on Austrian versus Standard High German, on focus group discussions with migrants in eight European countries and on public and political debates on citizenship in the European Union which screen newly installed language tests. The analysis of different genres and publics all illustrate the complexity of national and transnational identity constructions in a globalised world. What is experienced as European or as outside of Europe is the result of multiple activities, some of them consciously planned in the sense of political, economic or cultural intervention, others more hidden, indirect, in the background. Such developments are contradictory rather than harmonious, proceeding in ‘loops’ and partial regressions (rather than in a linear, uni-directional or teleological way). Thus, an interdisciplinary approach suggests itself which accounts for diverse context-dependent discursive and social practices.
The article proposes a framework for the analysis of identity as produced in linguistic interaction, based on the following principles: (1) identity is the product rather than the source of linguistic and other semiotic practices and therefore is a social and cultural rather than primarily internal psychological phenomenon; (2) identities encompass macro-level demographic categories, temporary and interactionally specific stances and participant roles, and local, ethnographically emergent cultural positions; (3) identities may be linguistically indexed through labels, implicatures, stances, styles, or linguistic structures and systems; (4) identities are relationally constructed through several, often overlapping, aspects of the relationship between self and other, including similarity/difference, genuineness/artifice and authority/ delegitimacy; and (5) identity may be in part intentional, in part habitual and less than fully conscious, in part an outcome of interactional negotiation, in part a construct of others’ perceptions and representations, and in part an outcome of larger ideological processes and structures. The principles are illustrated through examination of a variety of linguistic interactions.
The field of language and sexuality has gained importance within
socioculturally oriented linguistic scholarship. Much current work in
this area emphasizes identity as one key aspect of sexuality. However,
recent critiques of identity-based research advocate instead a
desire-centered view of sexuality. Such an approach artificially
restricts the scope of the field by overlooking the close relationship
between identity and desire. This connection emerges clearly in queer
linguistics, an approach to language and sexuality that incorporates
insights from feminist, queer, and sociolinguistic theories to analyze
sexuality as a broad sociocultural phenomenon. These intellectual
approaches have shown that research on identity, sexual or otherwise,
is most productive when the concept is understood as the outcome of
intersubjectively negotiated practices and ideologies. To this end, an
analytic framework for the semiotic study of social intersubjectivity
is presented. a
In many ways, the study of linguistic anthropology is the study of language and identity. The field’s concern with the linguistic production of culture entails a concern with the variety of culturally specific subject positions that speakers enact through language. Thus classic linguistic-anthropological studies of performance and ritual, of socialization and status, describe not merely kinds of speech but kinds of speakers, who produce and reproduce particular identities through their language use. Although the field did not rely heavily on the term identity itself until relatively recently, the concept has now taken a central position in linguistic anthropology, serving less as the background for other kinds of investigation and more as a topic meriting study in its own right. This chapter characterizes some of the most important recent developments in the new anthropological research tradition of language and identity.
Seeing is investigated as a socially situated, historically constituted body of practices through which the objects of knowledge that animate the discourse of a profession are constructed and shaped. Analysis of videotapes of archaeologists making maps and lawyers animating events visible on the Rodney King videotape focuses on practices that are articulated in a work-relevant way within sequences of human interaction, including coding schemes, highlighting, and graphic representations. Through the structure of talk in interaction, members of a profession hold each other accountable for, and contest the proper constitution and perception of, the objects that define their professional competence.
This naturalistic study of the ordinary work practice of sales representatives employed by the call centre of a large office-equipment company focuses on the actions of those sales reps during their calls with customers. We show how this work performance is organized through an improvisational choreography of action involving not only the turn-by-turn interchange with customers on the telephone but also the concurrent utilization of a variety of tools and artefacts. While 'improvise' and 'choreograph' may appear to be conceptually incongruent, our analysis demonstrates that even though these teleservice workers recurrently fabricate their actions out of materials and means that are conveniently on hand, the convenience is often carefully arranged to afford such extemporaneous composition. Finally, we conclude from this analysis that the traditional topics of 'work routines' and 'routinization' need to be respecified in order to take into account how any 'routine' is a contingently produced result (and in this centre, a craft-like performance).
Identity construction is a widely covered topic in studies of discourse and a
topic that has interested me for some time (Norris 2002, 2004, forthcoming).
As in my other chapters, my focus in this chapter is a methodological
one that allows the investigation of identity construction from a slightly
new perspective. In this chapter, I take up the topic of personal identity
construction and illustrate what a multimodal approach can offer to grasp
such a complex, fluid and ever-changing notion. While these pages centre
around one social actor in particular, I would like to emphasize that the
reader needs to keep in mind the quote above, which alludes to the fact that
one social actor can never act alone or have a personal identity without the
collective.
My work is grounded in the methodological framework of multimodal
interaction analysis (Norris, 2004) and with this, my writing is first of all an
extension of Scollon’s (1998, 2001) mediated discourse analysis. Second,
this framework is strongly influenced by the work of Kress and van Leeuwen
in multimodality (1998, 2001; and van Leeuwen 1998). Besides these two
merging directions, the framework of multimodal interaction analysis draws
on and builds upon the micro analytical aspects found in interactional
sociolinguistics of Goffman (1959, 1961, 1974), Gumperz (1982) and
Tannen (1984); discourse analysis as in Hamilton (1996, 1998) or Schiffrin
(1994, 2005); and the macro analytical aspects of a historical approach of
Wodak et al. (2001).
An interdisciplinary study providing first-hand evidence of the everyday lives of politicians; what politicians actually do on ‘the backstage’ in political organizations. The book offers answers to the widely discussed phenomena of disenchantment with politics and depoliticization.
This chapter introduces a multimodal framework for discourse analysis that moves toward an explication of the multiplicity of (inter)actions that a social actor engages in simultaneously, allowing for the analysis of large parts of what has been termed context in traditional discourse analysis.
The conceptual framework presented here permits the incorporation of all identifiable communicative modes, embodied and disembodied, that social actors orchestrate in interaction. Through an incorporation of numerous heuristically identifiable communicative modes, the framework demonstrates that social actors are often engaged in various (inter)actions simultaneously at different levels of attention/awareness.
J.L. Austin has demonstrated that people can "do things" -bring about social facts - with words. Here we describe how some people do things with things. This is a study of the symbolic use and situated history of material objects during a business negotiation between two German entrepreneurs: of the practical transformation of things-at-hand from objects of use into exemplars, or into forms-at-hand that can be used for the construction of transitory symbolic artifacts. Arranging boxes in a particular fashion can be the equivalent of an illocutionary act, but unlike words things remain on the scene as indexical monuments to prior interactional arrangements.
Building on the argument that practices between teacher and learners in classrooms may differ (Scollon and Scollon, 1981; Brice Heath, 1983 [1996]; Street, 1984; Gee, 1996; Barton and Hamilton, 1998), I look at how literacy focused school classroom teaching/learning practices instilled into an individual have a long-term effect. Using a multimodal (inter)action analytical approach (Norris, 2004, 2014) and the site of engagement as my analytical tool that brings together concrete actions, practices and discourses as a coherent whole, I examine actions, practices and discourses produced and reproduced by an art teacher and a new art student in a small private art school in Germany. While the art teacher draws on and re-produces the practice of painting, the new art student draws on and reproduces the practices and discourses that she learned in formal schooling, forcing her to produce and understand modal configurations that do not align with the creative practice that she is learning. This paper has potential educational and social ramifications as it illustrates that formal schooling may have a negative effect upon creativity by focusing the schooled individual upon results and on language/listening. These foci directly translate into modal behaviour which disadvantages the individual when trying to learn a creative practice, where the process and showing/seeing are emphasised. As the world becomes more multimodal and creative, we may want to engage in more research to rethink what and how children are taught.
This paper seeks an approach for a systematic analysis of the semiotic resources used by the designers of British World War 1 monuments. Semiotic studies of monuments have emphasised on the one hand factors from outside the' text', in other words contextual social and political factors that lead to design decisions, and on the other hand factors within the text, as being maximally important for this - the latter characterising such visual communication, like language, as a system or code. The paper uses an assessment of an example of the latter, O'Toole's functional analysis (1994) of sculptures, using a number of theories of the visual to draw out its limitations and point to a number of characteristics of visual communication that would need to be considered in order to carry out a satisfactory analysis.
Written from the standpoint of the social behaviorist, this treatise contains the heart of Mead's position on social psychology. The analysis of language is of major interest, as it supplied for the first time an adequate treatment of the language mechanism in relation to scientific and philosophical issues. "If philosophical eminence be measured by the extent to which a man's writings anticipate the focal problems of a later day and contain a point of view which suggests persuasive solutions to many of them, then George Herbert Mead has justly earned the high praise bestowed upon him by Dewey and Whitehead as a 'seminal mind of the very first order.'" Sidney Hook, "The Nation""
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.
In this monograph, the author offers a new way of examining the much discussed notion of identity through the theoretical and methodological approach called multimodal interaction analysis. Moving beyond a traditional discourse analysis focus on spoken language, this book expands our understanding of identity construction by looking both at language and its intersection with such paralinguistic features as gesture, as well as how we use space in interaction. The author illustrates this new approach through an extended ethnographic study of two women living in Germany. Examples of their everyday interactions elucidate how multimodal interaction analysis can be used to extend our understanding of how identity is produced and negotiated in context from a more holistic point of view.
Our perception of our everyday interactions is shaped by more than what is said. From coffee with friends to interviews, meetings with colleagues and conversations with strangers, we draw on both verbal and non-verbal behaviour to judge and consider our experiences.
Analyzing Multimodal Interaction is a practical guide to understanding and investigating the multiple modes of communication, and provides an essential guide for those undertaking field work in a range of disciplines, including linguistics, sociology, education, anthropology and psychology. The book offers a clear methodology to help the reader carry out their own integrative analysis, equipping them with the tools they need to analyze a situation from different points of view. Drawing on research into conversational analysis and non-verbal behaviour such as body movement and gaze, it also considers the role of the material world in our interactions, exploring how we use space and objects - such as our furniture and clothes - to express ourselves. Considering a range of real examples, such as traffic police officers at work, doctor-patient meetings, teachers and students, and friends reading magazines together, the book offers lively demonstrations of multimodal discourse at work.
Illustrated throughout and featuring a mini-glossary in each chapter, further reading, and advice on practical issues such as making transcriptions and video and audio recordings, this practical guide is an essential resource for anyone interested in the multiple modes of human interaction.
In this article, I investigate the practice-based research project called the poetry-to-painting project that the independent German artist, Andrea Brandt, who has also been a participant in two of my ethnographic studies on identity production, and I are involved in.
‘Divorce: A visual essay’ (Norris and Brandt, 2011) illustrates Andrea’s early to current emotive stages that she links to the life-changing event, her divorce. Taking this project as my example, I develop some theoretical thoughts and demonstrate how a practice-based project embeds and produces theoretical thought. I lean on mediated discourse theory (Scollon, 1998, 2001) and multimodal (inter)action analysis (Norris, 2004, 2011a).
Through this project, the notion of ‘modes’ is revisited, as are the notions of ‘practice’ and ‘nexus of practice’ as these pertain to the practice-based research project. Throughout the article, I show how practice-based research may gain by taking a multimodal mediated approach. This approach fosters a new way of thinking and thereby fosters the development of knowledge through practice-based research.
Taking the action, rather than the utterance or the text, as the unit of analysis, this article isolates different modes, investigating the interdependent relationships, illustrating that the visual mode of gestures can take up a hierarchically equal or a super-ordinate position in addition to the commonly understood sub-ordinate position in relation to the mode of spoken language. Building on McNeill, Birdwhistell, Eco, and Ekman and Friesen, and using a multimodal interaction analytical approach (Norris), I analyse in detail three separate everyday (inter)actions in which a deictic gesture is being performed and spoken language is used by the social actor performing the gesture. With these examples, I build on previous work in multimodal analysis of texts and multimodal interaction analysis, illustrating that the verbal is not necessarily more important than the visual (Kress and Van Leeuwen; Norris; Scollon), demonstrating that verbal and visual modes can be utilized together to (co)produce one message (Van Leeuwen), and showing that a mode utilized by a social actor producing a higher-level discourse structure hierarchically supersedes other modes in interaction (Norris).
This article examines the linguistic landscape (LL) of seven villages above the Arctic Circle, in the region called North Calotte. The area forms a complex nexus of contested and changing multilingualism, particularly as regards to endangered indigenous Sámi languages and Kven and Meänkieli minority languages. Viewing LL as a discursively constructed space and consequently signs as ‘frozed actions’ by various actors, and by adopting a Nexus analytical approach we examine three interrelated aspects of Arctic LLs: (1) the synchronic aspect by addressing the question of how languages are used in the landscapes of northern villages in the year 2008; (2) the historical aspect through identifying traces of different processes in these landscapes; and (3) the functional aspect by exploring what happens to endangered indigenous and minority languages in these LLs. In this article we argue that the Arctic LL is multi-layered, containing minority, national and global language orders, each organising and prioritising language resources differently. The layers and orders are, however, nested, and together they create the Arctic LL that bears witness to both the past processes and the current trends.
This article uncovers explicit simultaneous identity construction by applying Scollon and Scollon's (2001) notion of Discourse System and Multimodal Interaction Analysis (Norris, 2004a, 2004b). As a contribution to the theoretical discussion, this article investigates the micropolitics of personal national and ethnicity identity construction of Hispanic/Latino Americans in the Greater Washington DC area as a way of explicating a multimodal framework. This framework allows for the incorporation of multiple modes of communication into a discourse study, explicating how personal national and ethnicity identity can be misunderstood with far-reaching consequences. Turning towards a practical use of the theoretical knowledge, this article is relevant to societal discourses in which members from different cultural backgrounds interact, i.e. to any kind of intercultural scenario in the broadest sense. As such, the article suggests that educating diverse communities about simultaneous identity construction would result in a positive change and a possible solution to the discrepancies that can be found in communities, small groups and families.
This study develops an analysis of one site of engagement of public discourse in which identity is socially constructed. Through an analysis of the handing out of handbills in public places, the study argues that such sites of engagement are socially constructed through activities such as handing, a social situation frame in which there are expectations on appropriate behaviors, a regulatory frame of civic responsibility, and a generic frame in which the text itself implies a reader or receiver. The study argues that in such sites of engagement identities are imputed, claimed, ratified or contested and that the ascription of identity is, therefore, inherent in the activities at the sites of engagement in which this discourse takes place. Thus public discourse is argued to be inherently constitutive of social identity.
J.L. Austin has demonstrated that people can do things—bring about social facts — with words. Here we describe how some people do things with things. This is a study of the symbolic use and situated history of material objects during a business negotiation between two German entrepreneurs: of the practical transformation of things-at-hand from objects of use into exemplars, or into forms-at-hand that can be used for the construction of transitory symbolic artifacts. Arranging boxes in a particular fashion can be the equivalent of an illocutionary act, but unlike words things remain on the scene as indexical monuments to prior interactional arrangements.
Soviet psychologists' views of the relationship between psychology and Pavlovian psychophysiology (or the study of higher nervous activity, as it is referred to in the Soviet literature) has long been a matter of curiosity and concern in the United States. Not accidentally, it has also been a matter of concern and dispute within the USSR. The following is an excerpt from a work by one of the Soviet Union's most seminal psychological theorists on this issue. Written in the late 1920s, this essay remains a classic statement of Soviet psychology's commitment to both a historical, materialistic science of the mind and the study of the unique characteristics of human psychological processes.
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Written from the standpoint of the social behaviorist, this treatise contains the heart of Mead's position on social psychology. The analysis of language is of major interest, as it supplied for the first time an adequate treatment of the language mechanism in relation to scientific and philosophical issues. "If philosophical eminence be measured by the extent to which a man's writings anticipate the focal problems of a later day and contain a point of view which suggests persuasive solutions to many of them, then George Herbert Mead has justly earned the high praise bestowed upon him by Dewey and Whitehead as a 'seminal mind of the very first order.'"âSidney Hook, The Nation
(forthcoming) Spiritual vegetarianism: identity in everyday life of Thai non-traditional religious cult members
- B Makboon
National and transnational identities: European and other identities constructed in interview with EU officials
- R Wodak
Identity change in everyday life: learning how to be a working mother
- S Norris
Interaction-language in multimodal action In: Handbook “Language in Multimodal Contexts
- S Norris
- Scollon
Identity change in everyday life : learning how to be a working mother In th Conference San
- Norris
- Kress
forthcoming Spiritual vegetarianism : identity in everyday life of Thai non - traditional religious cult members thesis Auckland University of Technology
- Makboon
The of Displayed Art University
- Toole