Multimodal InterAction Analysis

Sigrid Norris

Auckland University of Technology, NZ

Multimodal InterAction Analysis is a course on Multimodal Discourse Analysis with a particular focus on INTER-ACTION.  While the interactional perspective is typically present in many types of multimodal discourse analysis, this course emphasizes the multimodal action(s) involved in interaction (Norris 2004; Scollon 2001; Scollon and Scollon 2004).  In this course, I discuss the tools that are necessary to engage in a multimodal interaction analysis.

For more info, go to ALI

AILA 2008 - The 15th World Congress of Applied Linguistics

August 24-29, 2008
Essen, Germany

Symposium Title: Multimodal Discourse Analysis: Temporality, timescales, cycles of time and timelines                          

             Thematic Strand:  Multimodality in Discourse and Text

This Symposium will attempt to broaden our understanding of time in multimodal discourse analysis.  Rather than just presenting papers, the symposium organizer has invited two discussants to this forum, both of whom are well known for their work on time.  Jay Lemke has written extensively on timescales and chronotopes and Ron Scollon has published on the intersection of time cycles in interaction.  With the insight of these two scholars, four paper presentations, and an extended audience discussion, the symposium organizer hopes to gain a better working definition for time in multimodal discourse analysis.

After a brief introduction of the symposium theme by Ron Scollon, Sigrid Norris (Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand) will present her thoughts on time and multimodality.  Time, according to Leibnitz or Kant, she argues, does not exist in and by itself, but rather is a part of the human intellectual structure, enabling us to envision a measuring system that allows us to make sense of our worlds.  So to speak, time is a theoretical construct that allows the measuring of events in relation to one another.  Using several video excerpts of multiparty interaction, she investigates external and internal time (Daniel Teruggi 2006) and illustrates that individuals are often Running on two different timescales concurrently. 

In the second presentation, Najma Al Zidjali (Sultan Qaboos University, Oman) draws on the notions of voice, synchronization and layered simultaneity (Blommeart 2002) to explore, from the perspective of multimodal discourse analysis, the interplay between synchronized visual texts (Arabic political cartoons published online) and the newly emerging action in the Muslim world of collectively and verbally desynchronizing them. The analysis illustrates the role that desynchronization can play as a tool for creating power by allowing manipulations of timescales.

In the next presentation, David Hughes (Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand) identifies recent trends in post-modern filmic narrative by investigating how non-linear narrative may be used to further explore and express the internalised landscapes of memory, imagination and identity; where such insights on  the  human  condition may be uniquely afforded and enhanced through the medium’s ability to construct and portray alternative scaffolds of time.

The last paper presentation will be give by Rodney Jones (City University of Hong Kong) in which he explores the way urban skateboarders in Hong Kong construct time through their physical performances, their talk, their bodily habits and the music and video games they consume, how, in doing so, they construct identities that both draw upon and critique the dominant rhythms of the city in which they live.

Following the four presentations, Jay Lemke will discuss timescales in respect to the papers and in general.  After Lemke’s discussion of the papers, Ron Scollon will discuss cycles of time in respect to the papers and in general.  After having heard all of these thoughts in respect to temporality, timescales, cycles of time and timelines, the symposium organizer hopes to engage the audience in a fruitful discussion that will bring researchers to a clearer working definition of time in regards to multimodal discourse analysis.

Summary

This Symposium will attempt to broaden our understanding of time in multimodal discourse analysis.  With the insight of Ron Scollon and Jay Lemke as discussants, four paper presentations, and an extended audience discussion, the symposium organizer hopes to gain a better working definition for time in multimodal discourse analysis.  The themes of the four papers are: 1. investigating external and internal time; 2. discussing voice, synchronization and layered simultaneity; 3. constructing of time through physical performances, talk, bodily habits and music or video games; and 4. investigating non-linear narrative in post-modern film.

For more info go to www.aila2008.org