Article

Intersubjectivity and Materiality: A Multimodal Perspective

April 2016
Multimodal Communication 5(1):2016

DOI:10.1515/mc-2016-0003

Authors:

Victoria University of Wellington

Researchers seeking to analyse how intersubjectivity is established and maintained face significant challenges. The purpose of this article is to provide theoretical/methodological tools that begin to address these challenges. I develop these tools by applying several concepts from multimodal (inter)action analysis to an excerpt taken from the beginning of a tutoring session, drawn from a wider data set of nine one-to-one tutoring sessions. Focusing on co-produced higher-level actions as an analytic site of intersubjectivity, I show that lower-level actions that co-constitute a higher-level action can be delineated into tiers of materiality. I identify three tiers of materiality: durable, adjustable and fleeting. I introduce the theoretical/methodological tool tiers of material intersubjectivity to delineate these tiers analytically from empirical data, and show how these tiers identify a multimodal basis of material intersubjectivity. Building on this analysis I argue that the durable and adjustable tiers of material intersubjectivity produce the interactive substrate, which must be established in order for actions that display fleeting materiality to produce intersubjectivity. These theoretical/methodological tools extend the framework of multimodal (inter)action analysis, and I consider some potential applications beyond the example used here.

Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis

Chapter

Dec 2019

Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis was developed to study social interaction based upon the theoretical notion of mediated action. Building on this core concept, Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis includes several theoretical/methodological tools. These tools facilitate analysis which moves flexibly between micro-level moments of interaction and macro-level practices and discourses. In this chapter, the application of mediated action to multimodal analysis is discussed, before the central theoretical/methodological tools are introduced. Tight links are made between the tools used in Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis and the core theoretical tenets, to support robust multimodal interaction research.

Fight for focus: attention and agency in sight-translated interaction

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2021

Randi Havnen

This paper presents an analysis of three roleplayed interpreted institutional meetings in which sight translation is part of the interaction. The analysis is based on multimodal (inter)action analysis and utilises the analytical tool of modal density as indication of attention/awareness. This analytical framework is novel in interpreting studies. The data include filmed material from an experimental setting and participants’ reflections about the situation. The findings show variations in sight translation practices and that the shift from interpreting to sight translation affects interactional patterns, particularly social actors’ attention and agency. In my discussion of agency in sight-translated interaction, I argue that interpreters, in addition to translating, need to pay attention to interactional issues related to attention and agency caused by the interpreting method.

Dimensions of Materiality

Chapter

Oct 2021

John A. Bateman

Gaze and Posture in Collaborative Building: A multimodal video analysis of emergent shared knowledge

Conference Paper

Full-text available

Dec 2018

This paper reports on analysis from a corpus of audio-video recorded interactions during a collaborative building task. The task generates distinct knowledge asymmetries which motivate interaction toward acquiring shared understandings. The analysis suggests that the convergence of the communicative modes of posture and gaze is crucial to producing shared knowledge. These findings support claims that there are no fixed norms for gaze distribution and postural orientation in interaction, but that these are heavily influenced by the environment and task. Furthermore, the findings suggest participants prioritise producing communicative intersubjectivity over perceptual intersubjectivity. The implications of these findings for the nature of intersubjectivity and research into teamwork are considered.

Multimodal Analysis

Chapter

Dec 2018

This chapter introduces the five most prominent approaches to multimodal data analysis: Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis, Mediated Discourse Analysis, Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis, Social Semiotics, and Multimodal Conversation Analysis. The chapter begins by discussing the origin of each approach, methods of data collection and analysis, and embedded theoretical foundations. The theoretical differences between the approaches are then examined with a focus on the way each approach treats the individual, the artefact, and the notion of mode during analysis. With the variety of available approaches to multimodal data analysis, it is important that researchers link data collection and analysis to coherent theoretical underpinnings.

Agency and Co-production: A Multimodal Perspective

Article

Jan 2017

Jesse Pirini

Building on multimodal (inter)action analysis as a theoretical and methodological framework, this article introduces and develops the theoretical/methodological tool called primary agency. Taking the mediated action as a unit of analysis, agency can be analysed as a feature of action. However, there is a lack of empirical approaches for the study of agency, and an overemphasis on language as the most important site for identifying agentive action. I develop primary agency through an analysis of three co-produced higher-level actions from a research project into high school tutoring. These are the higher-level actions of conducting research, tutoring and reading a text. Applying co-production and the modal density foreground/background continuum I explore how the researcher, the tutor and the student co-produce these higher-level actions. Through this analysis, I identify the most significant mediational means for each higher-level action, and the social actor with ownership or agency over these mediational means. I define this social actor as the one with primary agency over the co-produced higher-level action. Finally, my analysis outlines the implications of primary agency for co-produced higher-level actions, including the role of the researcher, the attention/awareness participants pay to overarching research projects, and links between primary agency and successful learning.

Communicating knowledge, getting attention, and negotiating disagreement via videoconferencing technology: A multimodal analysis

Article

Jan 2017

This article takes a multimodal approach to examine how two young men communicate knowledge, shift attention, and negotiate a disagreement via videoconferencing technology. The data for the study comes from a larger ongoing project of participants engaging in various tasks together. Linking micro, intermediate and macro analyses through the various methodological tools employed, the article presents multimodal (inter)action analysis (Norris, 2004, 2011, 2013a, 2013b) as a methodology to gain new insight into the complexity of knowledge communication via videoconferencing technology, which is relevant to many settings from education to employment, from organizations to gaming.

Concepts in multimodal discourse analysis with examples from video conferencing

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2016

Sigrid Norris

This article presents theoretical concepts and methodological tools from multimodal (inter)action analysis that allow the reader to gain new insight into the study of discourse and interaction. The data for this article comes from a video ethnographic study (with emphasis on the video data) of 17 New Zealand families (inter)acting with family members via skype or facetime across the globe. In all, 84 social actors participated in the study, ranging in age from infant to 84 years old. The analysis part of the project, with data collected between December 2014 and December 2015, is ongoing. The data presented here was collected in December 2014 and has gone through various stages of analysis, ranging from general, intermediate to micro analysis. Using the various methodological tools and emphasising the notion of mediation, the article demonstrates how a New Zealand participant first pays focused attention to his engagement in the research project. He then performs a semantic/pragmatic means, indicating a shift in his focused attention. Here, it is demonstrated that a new focus builds up incrementally: As the participant begins to focus on the skype (inter)action with his sister and nieces, modal density increases and he establishes an emotive closeness. At this point, the technology that mediates the interaction is only a mundane aspect, taken for granted by the participants.

Construction and Application of Multi-modal Translation Teaching Mode Under Media Turn

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2021

Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis in a Nutshell: Philosophy, Theory, Method and Methodology

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2021

Sigrid Norris

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).

Constructing autism inside and outside the clinic: Exploring relationships between psychoanalytic psychotherapists' and activists' discourses

Thesis

Full-text available

Jul 2019

Georgiou Konstantinos

[Book of Abstracts] 6th Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines Conference (CADAAD 2016)

Conference Paper

Sep 2016

Book of Abstracts of the 6th Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines Conference (CADAAD 2016)

Voicing infant talk: Infant's agency in Spanish family interactions

Article

Sep 2024

In a moment in which society frequently legitimizes the narrative that young children are “goal-oriented”, “competent” and “agents”, this paper denaturalizes this core value through empirical examples of how agency is enacted in family practices in which parents and siblings animate infant “speech” (voicing), fortifying the child's active family membership. The paper draws from a multimodal, longitudinal, ethnographic study examining the language socialization of infants in Spanish middle-class families from Madrid. In dialogue with a relational approach to agency, voicing is analyzed to showcase how the social construction of babies' agency dynamically changes in different positions (e. g. between competence and vulnerability) and in different verbal and no-verbal attunements between babies and family members. As we consider the interactional and verbal routine of voicing, we also move to a more vaguely defined terrain of undervalued dimensions, such as infant vocalizations and other forms of multimodal and embodied communicative practices, as they co-occur in socio-material ensembles.

Exploring Heroic Characters in Red Chinese Movies: A Multimodal Perspective

Article

Full-text available

May 2023

Red Chinese movies depict heroic individuals who make significant contributions to the nation, and these films play a vital role in constructing the national image of new China. This paper explores the images of heroic individuals in red Chinese movies using multimodal action theory. The findings indicate that these individuals are characterized by their selfless sacrifices for their country, fearless perseverance, embodiment of international communist ideals, and unwavering devotion and warmth. The study also reveals that facial expressions, body movements, and language serve as critical mediational means in shaping these characters, while other forms of mediation are underutilized. Recommendations include employing more mediational means to create more nuanced and complex characters in future red Chinese movies.

Multimodal instructional communication in science and engineering in two university classrooms

Article

May 2022

Bal Krishna Sharma

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.

Introduction and contents for special issue of Multimodal Communication 10 (1)

Article

Jan 2021

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

Article

Jun 2020

Sigrid Norris

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.

Multimodal Theory and Methodology: For the Analysis of (Inter)action and Identity

Book

Feb 2020

Sigrid Norris

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.

The Organised Self and Lifestyle Minimalism: Multimodal Deixis and Point of View in Decluttering Vlogs on YouTube

Article

May 2019

Michele Zappavigna

This paper explores how people present their relationship to their domestic objects in decluttering vlogs on YouTube, where they show the process of getting rid of undesired items. These videos are associated with discourses of ‘minimalism’ that are currently prevalent on social media platforms. The paper adopts a multimodal social semiotic approach, focusing on how language, gesture, and the visual frame coordinate intermodally to make meanings about objects. The multimodal construction of deixis in coordination with a type of ‘point-of-view shot’, filmed from the visual perspective of the vlogger, is examined. The broader aim is to investigate what these videos reveal about how digital semiotic capitalism is inflecting the lived experience of social media users. What is at stake is how people articulate intersubjective meanings about their experiences and relationships through the way they communicate about their objects.

References

Chapter

Mar 2019

Sigrid Norris

Mind as Action

Article

Full-text available

Jan 1998

James Wertsch

Excerpts available on Google Books. For more info, go to publisher's website : http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780195117530.do

Gaze and body orientation as an apparatus for patient inclusion into/exclusion from a patient-centred framework of communication

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2014

Demi Krystallidou

Full access: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/yCNqJWER2WuaWP8k4dR7/full Dialogue interpreter training has traditionally focused on the way in which the interpreter manages, and maintains, verbal interaction between the primary participants while it seems to overlook the importance of specific non-verbal aspects that are inherent in mediated interaction. This paper presents an alternative method for the training of medical interpreters by drawing on research on non-verbal communication in interpreter-mediated consultations with a view to drawing attention to the interpreter’s impact on the patient’s inclusion in a patient-centred framework during mediated consultations. More specifically, it provides evidence of non-verbal interaction that might open up new trajectories in the interpreters’ training by foregrounding the impact of the interpreter’s and others’ direction of gaze and body orientation on the accomplishment and maintenance - or lack thereof - of a patient-centred framework of communication. The present paper reports on findings that emerged from the analysis of selected excerpts of authentic interpreter-mediated consultations within the framework of a training experiment. Coded instances of interaction are analyzed by relying on Goffman’s (1981) “ratification process”, Goodwin’s (1981) “participation and engagement frameworks” and Norris’ (2004, 2006) “modal density foreground-background continuum”. Hospital ethical approval and participants’ written informed consent were obtained prior to the collection of data. Keywords: gaze; body orientation; posture; patient-centredness; interpreter; role

Multimodality’s challenge to marketing theory: A Discussion

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2012

Paul White

This discussion challenges conventional marketing theory regarding posters and billboards in the twenty first century. It argues against the prevailing dogmatic statement that a poster or billboard must communicate its message in mere seconds (Drewniarny and Jewler 2011). It also points out that convergence of traditional media with new communication technologies is challenging the notion that posters and billboards are still In contrast, it proposes that assessing how people interact with billboards and posters from a mediated and multimodal discourse perspective is more useful. This involves looking at posters and billboards when they are actually in use rather than considering them only as they are present in the environment. The modal density foreground-background continuum (Norris 2004), the concept of a site of attention (Jones 2005) and the idea of the communicative space (White 2012) are multimodal discourse methodology tools that prove particularly illuminating in this context. While no empirical data is analysed as part of this discussion, mediated and multimodal discourse analysis of two specific examples from previous studies serves to illustrate the points made here.

The interactional construction of a sentence in natural conversation

Chapter

Full-text available

Jan 1979

Charles Goodwin

The Interactive Construction of a Sentence in Natural Conversation.

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2002

this paper. 25 However, one feature of it relevant to the construction of the utterance being examined in this paper will be briefly noted. A speaker can request the gaze of a recipient by producing a phrasal break, such as a restart or a pause, in his utterance. After such a phrasal break nongazing recipients regularly bring their gaze to the speaker

Story-Telling in New Zealand Women's and Men's Talk

Chapter

Jan 1997

Janet Holmes

Mediated Discourse: The nexus of practice

Book

Sep 2002

Ron Scollon

Voices of the Mind

Book

Jan 1991

James Wertsch

Talking Difference: On Gender and Language.

Article

May 1996

Some thoughts on personal identity construction: A multimodal perspective

Chapter

Jan 2008

Sigrid Norris

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).

Feminist practice and poststructuralist theory

Book

Jan 1987

Chris Weedon

On the Architecture of Intersubjectivity

Chapter

Jan 1976

Ragnar Rommetveit

The Harvard-M.I.T. brand of psycholinguistics came into being as the love child of generative grammar and individual (as opposed to social) cognitive psychology. And transformational-generative linguistics, it was argued, represented a return to a prepositivistic view of science (Fodor and Garrett, 1966). Based on this philosophy, the idea of linguistic competence came to resemble the idea of ideal physical events (e.g., bodies falling freely through perfect vacua).

What is a mode? Smell, olfactory perception, and the notion of mode in multimodal mediated theory

Chapter

Dec 2015

Sigrid Norris

Moving towards multimodal mediated theory, I propose to define a mode as a system of mediated action that comes about through concrete lower-level actions that social actors take in the world. In order to explain exactly how a mode is a system of mediated action, I turn to a perfume blog and use one blog entry as my starting point. The mode that I primarily focus on in this article is the mode of smell, explicating that the mode of smell is not synonymous with olfactory perception, even though modal development of smell is certainly partially dependent upon olfactory perception. As I am ostensibly focusing on the one mode, I once again problematize this notion of countability and delineate the purely theoretical and heuristic unit of mode (Norris, 2004). I clarify that modes a) do not exist in the world as they are purely theoretical in nature; b) that modes can be delineated in various ways; and c) that modes are never singular. Even though the concept of mode is problematical – and in my view needs to always be problematized – I argue that the term and the notion of mode is theoretically useful as it allows us to talk about and better understand communication and (inter)action in three respects: 1. The notion of mode allows us to investigate regularities as residing on a continuum somewhere between the social actor(s) and the mediational means; 2. The theoretical notion of mode embraces socio-cultural and historical as well as individual characteristics, never prioritising any of these and always embracing the tension that exists between social actor(s) and mediational means; and 3. The theoretical notion of mode demonstrates that modal development through concrete lower-level actions taken in the world, is transferable to other lower-level actions taken.

Multimodal discourse analysis: a conceptual framework

Chapter

Dec 2015

Sigrid Norris

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.

Women, men and language: A sociolinguistic account of gender differences in language, Third edition

Article

Jan 2014

Jennifer Coates

Women, Men and Language has long been established as a seminal text in the field of language and gender, providing an account of the many ways in which language and gender intersect. In this pioneering book, bestselling author Jennifer Coates explores linguistic gender differences, introducing the reader to a wide range of sociolinguistic research in the field. Written in a clear and accessible manner, this book introduces the idea of gender as a social construct, and covers key topics such as conversational practice, same sex talk, conversational dominance, and children's acquisition of gender-differentiated language, discussing the social and linguistic consequences of these patterns of talk. Here reissued as a Routledge Linguistics Classic, this book contains a brand new preface which situates this text in the modern day study of language and gender, covering the postmodern shift in the understanding of gender and language, and assessing the book's impact on the field. Women, Men and Language continues to be essential reading for any student or researcher working in the area of language and gender.

Analysing buisness coaching: Using modal density as a methodological tool

Chapter

Dec 2013

Jesse Pirini

In this article I present an analysis of three extracts from a business coaching session captured on video. In business coaching the coach aims to help the client generate solutions to their own issues, often by finding different perspectives. However, there has been a lack of empirical studies focusing on the coaching interaction. Here I set out firstly to describe how the coach carried out the act of coaching, and to illustrate the use of higher and lower-level actions and modal density to focus on the detail of an (inter)action, while not losing sight of the whole. I analyse all the relevant communicative modes (Norris, 2011a), and focus closely on specific lower-level actions in the interaction. I use modal density (Norris, 2004) as a methodological tool to consider these lower-level actions as constituents of higher-level actions, and as a measure of participants’ relative engagement in various higher-level actions. Overall, I show that modal density and lower and higher-level actions can be used as useful tools for the analysis of business coaching at the level of the interaction.

Producing Shared Attention/Awareness in High School Tutoring

Article

Nov 2014

Jesse Pirini

During the activities of everyday life social actors always produce multiple simultaneous higher level actions. These necessarily operate at different levels of attention and awareness. Norris (2004, 2011) introduces modal density as a tool for analysing the attention/awareness of social actors in relation to higher level actions they produce, positioning actions in the foreground, midground and background of attention. Using modal density to analyse an opening and a closing in high school tutoring sessions, I show social actors transitioning into and out of producing the same higher level actions at the foreground of their attention/awareness. Through this analysis I identify two potentially unique aspects of one-to-one tutoring. Firstly I show one way that a tutor helps a student take on the practices of being a good student, and secondly I show the influence that students have over tutoring. I argue that movements into and out of a shared focus of attention are potentially useful sites for analysis of social interaction.

The ‘Chosen One’: Depicting religious belief through gestures

Article

Dec 2013

Boonyalakha Makboon

In this article, I analyze gestures produced during a dharma orientation lecture. The dharma orientation lectures are a part of the I-Kuan-Tao cult in Thailand. The analysis undertaken draws on multimodal (inter)action analysis (Norris, 2004, 2011a) providing the description of the interaction through multimodal transcripts of how different types of gesture simultaneously interplay with other modes in creating meaning. I begin with a frame analysis (Goffman, 1974; Tannen, 1993) of the interview transcript, where the primary participant consistently positions himself as ‘the chosen one’. Next, I analyse how the ‘chosen one’ uses different types of gestures to convey such ephemeral religious concepts as the ‘cycle of reincarnation’, ‘soul’, and ‘nirvana’ during the I-Kuan-Tao dharma orientation lecture. I demonstrate that gestures utilized by the participant, namely deictic, iconic, metaphoric and beat gesture (McNeill, 1992; Kendon, 2004) show the participant’s belief that he is ‘the chosen one’.

Actionary pertinence: Space to place in kitesurfing

Article

Dec 2013

Jarret Geenen

Contemporary research investigating the phenomena of lifestyle sport has highlighted the centrality of space, spatiality and spatial appropriation. Lifestyle sports tend to manifest in liminal and/or unbounded spaces with practitioners drawing upon the affordances of the natural environment in new and unique ways. Simultaneously, practitioners employ continuously evolving technical tools (equipment) in the undertaking of these activities. This article articulates the ways in which the specialised equipment employed as mediational means affect the perception, interpretation and valuation of physical components of the natural and man-made environment. In this article, I introduce the notion of actionary pertinence and concept of locational element through the analysis of the ways in which general geographic areas (spaces) become actual kitesurfing locations (places) for specific social actors through mediated action and in direct connection to the mediational means through which action occurs. Drawing upon data generated through a year-long video ethnography, I argue that components of the physical environment become locational elements for specific social actors in and through mediated action. This explicitly extends theorisation regarding how mediational means affect and structure the nature of the action they mediate (Vygotsky 1978, 1987; Wertsch 1991, 1998), and extends this argument by exemplifying how mediational means also affect and structure the perception and interpretation of physical components of the environment which have a bearing on mediated action. Furthermore, I articulate the ways in which these locational elements are considered, read, re-read and interpreted in terms of their actionary pertinence. Thus, the materiality of locational elements manifests as salient and/or relevant through the bearing an element has on specific mediated actions and practices.

Women, Men and Language: A Sociolinguistic Account of Gender Differences in Language

Article

Sep 1994

The Impact of Literacy-Based Schooling on Learning a Creative Practice: Modal Configurations, Practices and Discourses

Article

Nov 2014

Sigrid Norris

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.

Interaction and Mobility. Language and the Body in Motion

Book

Jan 2013

Being mobile: Interaction on the move

Chapter

May 2013

Modal Density and Modal Configurations: Multimodal Actions

Chapter

Jan 2014

Sigrid Norris

Social actors often are involved in more than one higher-level action. A father watches his toddler and converses with a client on the phone. A business woman has her child playing in the office and engages in computer mediated interactions with colleagues. A student is sending an SMS at a bus stop while conversing in person with a fellow student. Examples of simultaneous engagements in higher-level actions are abundant, a way to study them, however, is still in its infancy. In this chapter, I would like to clarify the difference between what I call “modal density” and what I call “modal configuration.” While both notions are always at play in interaction, the theoretical concepts underlying these notions differ slightly. At the current state in multimodal research, modal density is often confused with modal configuration, whereby all too often the actual underlying concept of modal density is being ignored.

Gender Trouble

Book

Jan 1990

Judith Butler

What is a mode? Smell, olfactory perception, and the notion of mode in multimodal mediated theory

Article

Jul 2013

Sigrid Norris

On the prefereces for agreement and contiguity in sequences in conversation

Article

Harvey Sacks

Mediated Discourse and Social Interaction

Article

Jan 1999

Ron Scollon

Intersubjectivity Without Agreement

Article

Jan 1996
Mind Cult Activ

Eugene Matusov

In this paper, there is an attempt to construct the notion of intersubjectivity as a process of a coordination of participants' contributions in joint activity. This notion incorporates the dynamics of both agreement and disagreement. I argue that a traditional definition of intersubjectivity as a state of overlap of individual understandings overemphasizes agreement and de-emphasizes disagreement among the participants in joint activity. It disregards disagreement at two levels: 1) by focusing only on integrative, consensus seeking, activities, in which disagreement among participants of joint activity often is viewed as only the initial point of the joint activity that has to be resolved by the final agreement (macro-level), and by considering disagreements as only nuisances or obstacles while focusing on integrative activities (micro-level). To illustrate how disagreement can constitute intersubjectivity at macro- and micro-levels, examples of children ' s development of a classroom play are examined. Diversity and fluidity of intersubjectivity will be discussed.

Modal density and modal configurations: Multimodal actions

Chapter

Jan 2009

Sigrid Norris

Multimodality is an innovative approach to representation, communication and interaction which looks beyond language to investigate the multitude of ways we communicate: through images, sound and music to gestures, body posture and the use of space. The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis is the first comprehensive ‘research tool kit’ for multimodal analysis, with 22 chapters written by leading figures in the field on a wide range of theoretical and methodological issues. It clarifies terms and concepts, synthesizes the key literature with in-depth exploration and illustrative analysis, and tackles challenging methodological issues. The Handbook includes chapters on key factors for Multimodality such as technology, culture, notions of identity and macro issues such as literacy policy. The handbook takes a broad look at multimodality and engages with how a variety of other theoretical approaches have looked at multimodal communication and representation, including visual studies, anthropology, conversation analysis, socio-cultural theory, socio-linguistics and new literacy studies. Detailed multimodal analysis case studies are also included, along with an extensive glossary of key terms, to support those new to multimodality and allow those already engaged in multimodal research to explore the fundamentals further. The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as researchers involved in the study of multimodal communication.

Multimodal Discourse Analysis: A Conceptual Framework

Chapter

Feb 2004

Sigrid Norris

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.

Identity in (Inter)action: Introducing Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis

Book

Jul 2011

Sigrid Norris

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.

Analyzing Multimodal Interaction: A Methodological Framework

Book

Jun 2004

Sigrid Norris

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.

Co-Construction: An Introduction

Article

Jul 1995
RES LANG SOC INTERAC

Tempo, Auftakt, Levels of Actions, and Practice: Rhythms in Ordinary Interactions

Article

Jan 2009

Sigrid Norris

This article builds on Scollon’s work on rhythm in ordinary talk (1981, 1982) and mediated discourse analysis (primarily 1998 and 2001) extending his work by utilizing multimodal interaction analysis (MIA) (Norris 2004) as the methodological framework. With multimodal transcripts of everyday interactions from grooming a horse to a workplace interaction and two boys painting Easter eggs, the article first illustrates Scollon’s notion of tempo, then discusses the new findings of Auftakt (offbeat or prelude taken from musicology) and that rhythm in chains of lower-level action may cross modal boundaries, before investigating a micro-medium-macro link. This micro-medium-macro link in everyday interaction is then explored through the analysis of the complexity of rhythm in everyday interaction by analysing an example of a father playing ball with his two-year old son. Here, it is demonstrated how multimodal rhythms are superimposed from chains of lower-level actions to chains of higher-level actions and to practices. Further, these superimposed rhythms are shown to take on a different tempo at each level. The article ends with the claim that rhythm, as Scollon thought, to a large extent structures ordinary interaction; but, as discussed throughout, and Scollon would have agreed, it is MIA that allows us to analyse the multimodal complexity.

The Architecture and Dynamics of Intersubjectivity in Science Classrooms

Article

May 2003
Mind

The zone of proximal development: Some conceptual issues

Article

Mar 1984
New Dir Child Dev

James Wertsch

Discusses Vygotsky's (1934 [1962]) ideas about the zone of proximal development (ZPD) and extends them by inclusion of the theoretical constructs of situation definition, intersubjectivity, and semiotic mediation. Vygotsky's notion of the ZPD has recently spurred much interest among developmental and cognitive psychologists. His ideas have been incorporated into studies on a variety of issues, including intelligence testing, memory, and problem solving. It is argued that several conceptual issues must be clarified to understand and use Vygotsky's insightful but somewhat cryptic claims about the ZPD. The fundamental theoretical construct that is needed in this connection is that of situation definition. It must be recognized that one and the same setting can be represented or defined in several different ways. Such notions as object representation and action pattern should be used to analyze situation definitions. It must also be recognized that in the ZPD, more than one situation definition is involved. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

The Neglected Situation

Article

Feb 2011
AM ANTHROPOL

ERVING GOFFMAN

The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.

Intersubjectivity as a way of informing teaching design for a community of learners classroom

Article

May 2001
TEACH TEACH EDUC

Eugene Matusov

In this paper, I relate concepts from research (mainly psychological) on intersubjectivity to problems emerging in designing classroom learning environments by considering one of my undergraduate teacher education classrooms, which I designed to run according to an educational philosophy of “community of learners”, and I consider the issues emerging from these efforts. It seems that the notion of intersubjectivity is helpful both for understanding difficulties one can face with a teaching design for a “community of learners” classroom and for improving such a design. I consider three aspects of intersubjectivity corresponding to the teaching design difficulties described here: (1) intersubjectivity as having something in common, (2) intersubjectivity as coordination of participants’ contributions, and (3) intersubjectivity as human agency. The paper is limited to the issues of internal teaching design and does not address institutional constraints.

On Message Structure

Jan 1974

R Rommetveit

Rommetveit, R. (1974). On Message Structure. London: Wiley.

Research into Tutoring: Exploring Agency and Intersubjectivity (Unpublished doctoral thesis)

Jan 2015

J Pirini

Pirini, J. (2015). Research into Tutoring: Exploring Agency and Intersubjectivity (Unpublished doctoral thesis). Auckland, NZ: AUT University.

Activity and consciousness. Philosophy in the USSR, Problems of Dialectical Materialism

A N Leontyev

Leontyev, A. N. (1977). Activity and consciousness. Philosophy in the USSR, Problems of Dialectical Materialism. Retrieved from http://www.trotsky.org/archive/leontev/works/activity-consciousness.pdf

On the architecture of intersubjectivity Retrieved from http On the preferences for agreement and contiguity in sequences of conversation California

Jan 1979
201-214

R Rommetveit
L H Strickland
F E Aboud
K J Gergen

Rommetveit, R. (1979). On the architecture of intersubjectivity. In: Social Psychology in Transition, L. H. Strickland, F. E. Aboud, and K. J. Gergen (Eds.), 201–214. Springer US. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978- 1-4615-8765-1_16 Sacks, H. (1987). On the preferences for agreement and contiguity in sequences of conversation. In: Talk and Social Organisation, G. Button and J. R. E. Lee (Eds.). California: Multilingual Matters.

Communicating Religious Belief: Multimodal Identity Production of Thai Vegetarians

B Makboon

Makboon, B. (2015). Communicating Religious Belief: Multimodal Identity Production of Thai Vegetarians. Auckland, NZ: AUT University.

Some thoughts on personal identity construction In: Advances in Discourse Studies

Jan 2008
132-147

S Norris

Norris, S. (2008). Some thoughts on personal identity construction. In: Advances in Discourse Studies, V. K. Bhatia, J. Flowerdew, & R. H. Jones (Eds.), 132–147. New York: Routledge.

Interaction - Language in multimodal action. In: Handbook “Language in Multimodal Contexts

S Norris

Norris, S. (in press). Interaction -Language in multimodal action. In: Handbook "Language in Multimodal Contexts", N.-M. Klug and H. Stöckl (Eds.). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.

Activity and consciousness Philosophy in the Problems of Dialectical Materialism Retrieved from http www trotsky org archive leontev works activity consciousness pdf