Evaluation in academic discourse has received considerable attention from researchers.Much of the work on evaluation has focused, however, on written genres, and less attention has been paid to how evaluation unfolds in spoken academic genres. In our present research, we are interested in disclosing how the interpersonal meaning of evaluation is expressed in the discussion session (hereafter DS) that follows conference paper presentations, since DS has already been defined as an "evaluative forum", when comparing its phraseological patterns with those of the presentation.Though the study of evaluation in spoken genres has been developed focusing exclusively on linguistic aspects, we assume the non-linguistic message that accompanies the linguistic message has an effect on the interpersonal meaning of the communication. Therefore, the aim of our research is to analyse the evaluative meaning conveyed in DSs that follow paper presentations in an applied linguistics conference. In the study, we draw on a social semiotic theory of language and of kinesics and paralanguage to frame a multimodal exploration of this interpersonal meaning. The comparative analysis between linguistic evaluation and multimodal evaluation reveals the significant contribution of non-linguistics features, which are commonly used to intensify linguistic evaluation or to express the speakers' attitude.Key words: discussion sessions, multimodal discourse analysis, conference paper presentations, evaluation, spoken academic discourse, discourse analysis
IntroductionConference presentations are one of the first challenges a researcher has to face in his or her career, due to the complexity and inter-relationships between the speech events involved in it. This challenge becomes even more relevant for the non-native speaker when the presentation and the discussion session following it have to be done in 1 querolm@gmail.com 2 fortanet@uji.es English. One of the most complete studies of the genre of conference presentations is that of Räisänen (1999), which situates the conference paper presentation as part of a genre chain. This chain starts with the call for abstracts in a conference and ends either with the oral presentation during the conference or with the publication of the proceedings. This author (1999, p.69) defines conferences as "sites for publishing research results and an open ground for confrontation, discussion, and ratification of meaning". Conference presentations are meant to provide a forum to promote interaction between scholars. It is also important to note the complexity of conference discourse. Ventola (1999) coined the term 'semiotic spanning' to acknowledge the involvement of all modes of communication: written as well as spoken texts, visual materials and actions, among others; they all form a cohesive communication event. She points out that the relationship between all speech events, between the paper presentation and its source materials as well as between the presentation and the final version of the paper, as pub...