Modal Density in Structuring Segments Containing Organizational Metadiscourse Versus Content Sequences

Bernad-Mechó, Edgar

doi:10.18485/esptoday.2022.10.1.1

Cited by 6 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 5 publications

(8 reference statements)

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“…The identification and coding of modes were facilitated by observing how the communicative modes were used when they co-occurred with verbal speech to communicate higher-level mediated actions such as explaining how the product worked and its benefits. The presence of a mode assuming a more relevant role or the co-occurrences of many modes in a modally dense situation may indicate a heightened level of presenter's awareness/attention to signal a higher-level mediated action (see Bernad-Mechó, 2022;Norris, 2004).…”

Section: Data Transcription and Codingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gaze and Facial Expression in Engineering Student Presentations: A Comparative Case Study of a High- and Low-Performing Presenter

Lee¹

2023

ESP Today

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Gaze and facial expression are non-verbal communicative modes that help presenters to reinforce their verbal messages and perform communicative functions to meet oral presentation goals. However, there are limited studies on how gaze and facial expression are used in engineering student presentations, especially in areas related to their occurrence, frequency, and duration incurred during delivery. This case study used multimodal discourse analysis and coding statistics to compare the ways gaze and facial expression were used by two engineering students who scored the highest and lowest marks in an engineering presentation assessment. The findings showed the high-performing presenter used comparatively lesser gaze fixation shifts and longer durations of direct and sustained gaze at the audience during her delivery when compared to the low-performing presenter. Serious and smiling facial expressions were used predominantly throughout the presentation by the high-performing presenter, as compared to the low-performing presenter who used mostly neutral facial expressions. It was concluded that the high-performing presenter used gaze and facial expression more successfully to perform communicative functions to emphasise co-occurring verbal messages, evaluate and promote her product, foster a competent impression, and establish rapport with the audience.

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Section: Data Transcription and Codingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gaze and Facial Expression in Engineering Student Presentations: A Comparative Case Study of a High- and Low-Performing Presenter

Lee¹

2023

ESP Today

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“…Rhetorical style lecturers, on the other hand, use less metadiscursive instances, but these, in turn, are more spontaneous and multimodally complex. Bernad-Mechó (2022) illustrates the ways in which metadiscourse is present within lectures. He finds out that organizational metadiscourse mostly occurs in structuring segments, i.e.…”

Section: Metadiscoursementioning

confidence: 99%

Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis for the study of lectures: active and passive uses of metadiscourse

Bernad-Mechó

2023

Multimodal Communication

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This paper offers a Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis study of how metadiscourse is used in university lectures. Metadiscourse is frequently employed in spoken academic discourse to guide the audience through the contents of the speech, thus becoming an essential element to foster comprehension in lectures. Although lectures have been largely researched under a multimodal eye, studies looking at the multimodal nature of metadiscourse are still scarce. In fact, previous multimodal explorations of metadiscourse in lectures point towards discrepancies in the attention given by lecturers to metadiscursive instances. In this study, six face-to-face lectures in fields within Humanities were analyzed to spot all instances of organizational metadiscourse. Next, the fragments containing such metadiscourse were further explored through a Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis to identify the structure of higher-level actions and the ways in which metadiscourse was integrated as part of the modal configurations of the actions. The analysis of higher-level actions using the foreground-background continuum reveals two main roles in the use of metadiscourse: an active one, in which metadiscourse is explicitly used to guide and engage the audience, as expected; and a passive one, in which metadiscourse is rather used as a filler in the background. These results contribute to reflecting on teaching practices and raising awareness on the importance of multimodal literacy for teacher training.

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“…To do so, a multimodal approach is followed, employing concepts from different schools of thought: following Multimodal Discourse Analysis (O'Halloran, 2021), the semiotic resources (modes) used in these videos and their combinations in multimodal ensembles are explored. Furthermore, the concept of modal density from Multimodal Interaction Analysis (Bernad-Mechó, 2022;Norris, 2022) is applied. Modal density refers to the number of modes employed at a given moment and/or their intensity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Engaging the Audience in Online Youtube Science Dissemination Videos: A Look at the Uptake of Multimodal Engagement Strategies

Bernad-Mechó¹,

Valeiras-Jurado²

2023

ESP Today

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This study deals with YouTube science dissemination videos as a pedagogical tool for ESP and EMI courses. These videos maximize the reach of scientific content bringing it closer to the general public. However, in this process, YouTube science video need to be adapted to non-specialized audiences to make their content more accessible, entertaining, and engaging. The introductions to these videos are paramount for their success, as they tend to contain many engagement techniques. In this study we explore the potential of multimodal engagement strategies by looking at the audience uptake. Seven introductions to YouTube science dissemination videos were selected and annotated with the software Multimodal Video Analysis for engagement strategies, embodied and filmic modes. The selected clips were then presented to a group of higher education students to elicit their opinion regarding their engagement potential. As a second step, engagement was related to the use of semiotic modes, thus triggering a reflection on the relevance of multimodal literacy. Our results suggest that filmic modes become an essential component in the creation of successful fast-paced attention-getting videos. They also bring to the fore the importance of multimodal awareness in science communication and the potential of well-orchestrated ensembles to engage online audiences. Implications for ESP and EMI courses are discussed.

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Modal Density in Structuring Segments Containing Organizational Metadiscourse Versus Content Sequences

Cited by 6 publications

References 5 publications

Gaze and Facial Expression in Engineering Student Presentations: A Comparative Case Study of a High- and Low-Performing Presenter

Gaze and Facial Expression in Engineering Student Presentations: A Comparative Case Study of a High- and Low-Performing Presenter

Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis for the study of lectures: active and passive uses of metadiscourse

Engaging the Audience in Online Youtube Science Dissemination Videos: A Look at the Uptake of Multimodal Engagement Strategies

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