Evaluation in discussion sessions of conference presentations: theoretical foundations for a multimodal analysis

Abstract

Discussions sessions have not received much attention within the genre of conference presentations. In this paper, we present the theoretical framework that underlies the approach followed to analyse the multimodal expression of evaluation. Then, an example of the application of the study has been considered necessary to understand it. Corpus linguistics provided the indications to collect the corpus, annotate it and find the appropriate software to digitalise the relevant information for the study. Secondly, genre studies and conversational analysis gave the clues to establish a structure in the linguistic expressions found in the discussion sessions of paper presentations. Thirdly, systemic functional linguistics and pragmatics provided the basis for an evaluative scheme that could be applied to the academic discourse of the corpus, considering its multimodal nature. Fourthly, the tools to observe the non-verbal communication associated with evaluative language were found in multimodal discourse analysis studies. All together, the application of these variables led to an original study of discussion sessions, which deployed interesting results.

A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Approach to Humour in Conference Presentations: The Case of Autobiographic References

“…These gestures are in pragmatic synchrony with the speech and the intonation showing, as the semantic meaning of 'no les tengo que decir' (there's no need to tell you) shows, intensification of the confirmation of his words and tries to include the audience (a ustedes / nosotros) (to you / us) using what is called pluralisations markers (McClave 2000) (lateral movements with inclusive pronouns). These results are in line with previous studies (Querol-Julián, 2011;Fortanet and Querol-Julián 2012), which show how head nods intensify the semantic interpretation of the discourse.…”

“…However, only a few highlight the importance of Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) and even fewer analyse spoken academic discourse. MDA argues that all discourse is inherently multimodal and it is not possible to achieve a comprehensive understanding of spoken discourse unless both linguistic and non-linguistic features are jointly analysed (Baldry & Thibault, 2006;O'Halloran, 2004;Querol-Julián, 2011;Querol-Julián and Fortanet, 2012). The study of multimodality in language and language systems often focuses its attention on interaction, which is examined from two perspectives: human-to-human interaction (Norris, 2004) and human-machine interaction (Roope, 1999).…”

“…The aim of our research is to look into the humorous role of autobiographic references when used in plenary lectures in conferences in English and in Spanish. We have followed a Multimodal Discourse Analysis methodological framework on spoken academic discourse (Querol-Julián, 2011;Querol-Julián and Fortanet, 2012). …”

A Multimodal evaluation of Malala Yousafzai's speech at Harvard University

“…The study exhibited in this article has followed a methodological framework for analysis applied in previous Multimodal Discourse Analysis studies on spoken academic discourse (Querol-Julián, M 2011;QuerolJulián, M. & I. Fortanet-Gómez, 2013;Fortanet-Gómez, I. & M. N. RuizMadrid, 2014).…”

Complaint sequences across proficiency levels: the contribution of pragmatics and multimodality

“…Gaze and especially gaze directions (Goodwin, 1981(Goodwin, , 1994 were typically combined with head movements. Gaze might not be always continuous in an interaction (Querol-Julián, 2011), and indeed, data revealed that participants changed gaze directions over the course of the conversation. The data also showed examples in which both participants looked at each other when interacting as well as situation in which the 'hearer', in this case the complainee, tended to look more at the complainer than the complainer looked at the complainee (Goodwin, 1981), possibly due to the difficulty to performing a FTA.…”