Abstract
Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) aims to investigate how different semiotic modes – such as voices, images and gesture – interact in order to construe a text-specific and socially-accepted meaning. In this book, Norris offers a well-organized step-by-step guide to MDA from the point of view of Multimodal Interaction Analysis (MIA), focussing on how discourse participants use multiple modes to interact with others. Addressed to scholars interested in developing or teaching the skills to analyze multimodal (inter)action, the volume frames the complex discursive construction of human action and interaction from a holistic and socially-informed perspective that encompasses its physical, psychological, cognitive and performative aspects. This perspective is reflected in the detailed description of tools, phases and steps developed to help researchers carry out a systematic and theoretically well-founded analysis.
The book is divided in nine chapters. Chapter 1 offers a brief overview of discourse-analytic studies on the interaction of images and text, on colour and on moving images over the past two decades. Rather than a comprehensive review, the chapter aims to serve as a reference of tools employed in previous research. Chapter 2 is devoted in turn to the complex interdisciplinary background of MIA. Drawing particularly from Scollon’s (2001) account of human (inter)action as the product of embodied processes and social practices involving both verbal and non-verbal modes, MIA aims precisely to explore how individuals communicate and (inter)act, creating and sharing meaning through the mediation and simultaneous interplay of multiple semiotic resources. Norris distinguishes three levels within mediated action: the lower-mediated level action (‘the smallest pragmatic meaning unit’, p. 40), the higher-level mediated action (an action produced by the interplay of lower-mediated actions) and the frozen mediated action (‘an action embedded within an object environment that tells of the previously performed actions’, p. 45). This distinction is crucial to the analytic procedures proposed later. Despite its complexity, the chapter is supplied with useful notes, tables and examples that ensure its accessibility to the novice reader.
Chapters 3–7 represent the main core of the book, a detailed and well-organized guide to research covering from the selection of a topic and the formulation of research questions to the analysis and interpretation of findings. Chapter 3 deals with how to collect and generate naturally-occurring data to maximize its richness, from camera positioning to how to take field notes and what essential information to include in collection tables. The chapter also addresses ethical issues implied in collecting naturally-occurring data, such as how to ensure the participants’ rights and how to minimize the potential power difference between researchers and participants, especially in ethnographic studies. Chapter 4 focuses on how to systematically develop dataset tables, how to (co-)construct sites of engagement with participants, and how to formulate new research questions as a result of this engagement.
Narrowing down the analysis, Chapter 5 guides the researchers in their selection of data excerpts for micro analysis and in the subsequent demarcation and transcription of higher-level mediated actions. Chapter 6 offers practical guides on how to transcribe modes and lower mediated actions, including several transcription conventions used to transcribe spoken language, gestures and gaze. Finally, Chapter 7 provides instructions regarding how to use analytical tools informed by the notions of perception and embodiment, such as frozen mediated action and modal density. This section helps the researcher place the findings of a micro analysis into its wider context.
Throughout these chapters each phase of analysis is described in great detail. The procedural steps are exemplified in multiple contexts of application – from the analysis of small data sets to medium-scale and larger ethnographic studies – providing an illustration that will be useful to readers with different levels of expertise. Such practical guidance will doubtlessly appeal to scholars interested in how discourses and practices are enacted by multimodal texts, though the book offers more than practical analytical tools. One of its major strengths is the strong theoretical grounding behind the guidance for systematically working on video data. Such a reading prevents novice and emerging scholars from getting lost in their data, whose multimodal nature requires a systematic and organized coding process. At the same time, it also prevents them from losing sight of the theoretical background and, as a result, from lessening the understanding of the social complex phenomena enacted by mediated actions. Norris explicitly presents the book as a resource for undergraduate and graduate courses on how to systematically analyze multimodal texts and interactions, training students on how to conduct small- and medium-sized research projects.
Due to its highly explanatory and innovative nature, Systematically Working With Multimodal Data represents a useful and multilayered guide and resource for researchers at different levels. Apart from its clarity and suitability for use in teaching, what makes this volume distinctive is the new tripartite perspective on mediated action proposed by the author, walking the readers through each phase of the analysis by addressing and answering questions of a practical nature as well in depth-reflections on the conceptual framework of MIA in a new light. Students of all levels as well as novice and established researchers and instructors interested in investigating discourses from a multimodal interaction perspective would benefit from Norris’ insights.