Multimodal evaluation in academic discussion sessions: How do presenters act and react?

Abstract

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...

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

“…The variables analysed, which have been adopted after systemic functional linguistics, conversation analysis, and multimodal discourse analysis studies follow Querol-Julián & Fortanet-Gómez (2012). Figure 2 summarises the model of analysis of evaluation of DSs from the macrostructure of the discourse to the linguistic and non-linguistic resources.…”

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

“…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). …”

Semiotic Modes in the Organization of Lectures in English and in Spanish

“…This series of semiotic modes might describe possible recurrent patterns and relationships between verbal (linguistic) and non-verbal (paralinguistic and kinesic) elements. Based on previous multimodal studies on spoken academic discourse (Fortanet-Gómez & Ruiz-Madrid, 2014Querol-Julián, 2011;Querol-Julián & Fortanet-Gómez, 2012), and especially on Ruiz-Madrid and Fortanet-Gómez' (2015) contrastive multimodal analysis, we decided to carry out a MDA in three phases:…”

“…However, there is a clear lack of research where metadiscourse in academic lectures is examined from a multimodal point of view, taking into consideration the several semiotic modes that are used by the speaker to convey meaning. Some of the very few examples could include Querol-Julián(2011) or Querol-Julián andFortanet-Gómez(2012), who examine how evaluation (or stance in some other approaches to metadiscourse) is expressed from a multimodal perspective, taking a look not only at the language, but also at paralinguistic and kinesic features. Multimodal discourse analyses (MDA) have proven the relevance of the presence of these semiotic systems and the relationships among them, which adds a particular communicative value to the linguistic message conveyed (Fortanet-Gómez & Ruiz-Madrid, 2014;Querol-Julián, 2010;QuerolJulián & Fortanet-Gómez, 2012).Therefore, the aim of this study is to take a closer look and revisit the concept of metadiscourse from a multimodal perspective in order to shed some light on how lecturers organize their lectures through the use of multimodal metadiscourse.…”