Combining Multimodal Techniques to Approach the Study of Academic Lectures: A Methodological Reflection

Abstract

This article offers a methodological reflection on the use of multimodal techniques for the study of academic lectures. Three distinct multimodal approaches have been put forward to explore the use of language holistically, namely, multimodal social semiotics (MSS), multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) and multimodal interaction analysis (MIA). These approaches differ in their main focus—the social context, the system of semiotic resources available to the speakers and the social actors, respectively—and the tools they provide to conduct multimodal analyses. To exemplify how analyses may be conducted within each of the paradigms in the context of academic lectures in English, I examine an excerpt extracted from an African-American history lecture from Yale University by a native English speaker in which he organizes his discourse in between content sections. Through the use of short multimodal transcriptions, I discuss how MSS can be used for reflections on the social contexts of academic lectures, MDA describes the use of semiotic resources employed by the lecturers, and MIA can be used to look into how lecturers structure their speech into sequences of actions. Ultimately, I suggest a combination of multimodal methodologies to obtain a broader account of the intricacies of discourse in academic settings.