Towards developing multimodal literacies in the ESP classroom: methodological insights and practical applications

In this article, we provide an introduction to this special issue of Multimodal Communication entitled “Multimodal approaches in ESP: Innovative research and practice”. The Special Issue showcases innovative research presented at the 2019 International Conference on Knowledge Dissemination and Multimodal Literacy: Research Perspectives on ESP in a Digital Age. After briefly discussing the multimodal approach in language teaching and specifically in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and its key role in developing multimodal competence, each of the five featured contributions is reviewed. The contributions offer theoretically grounded and research-informed applications of the multimodal approach in the ESP classroom

Special Issue: Multimodal approaches in ESP: Innovative research and practice

In language teaching, a multimodal approach enhances awareness of semiotic modes beyond verbal language, which can then be leveraged to both comprehend and produce discourse in the target language more effectively on a variety of levels: linguistic, discursive, pragmatic, and cultural. With particular reference to English for Specific Purposes (ESP), learners face additional challenges driven by language and communicative practices associated with specific disciplinary and professional domains. Among these are not only specialized lexico-grammatical features, registers, and genres, but also domain-specific situated and embodied practices that entail multisemiotic processes or “chains of acts, representations and people across spaces and over time” Thus, linguists and practitioners in ESP instructional settings are called upon to devise methods and materials that take into account how multiple semiotic resources contribute to meanings, and then implement them to enhance language learning and foster the multimodal competence associated with the discourse processes of a given specialized domain. The selection, preparation, and application of methods and materials to be used to achieve these objectives can thus benefit from underpinning research that highlights their multimodal/multimedia dimension from various theoretical and analytical perspectives, including multimodal social semiotics and multimodal interaction analysis. The aims of this Special Issue are to 1) advance the current state of knowledge about how multimodal and multimedia resources can be leveraged to improve learning in ESP settings, 2) provide a platform for research that highlights innovative approaches to ESP practice, with a strong focus on application and/or experimentation in the classroom, and 3) offer insights for bridging the traditional gap between smaller-scale and larger-scale multimodal research methods, however, without losing sight of the value of each perspective in the context of ESP. Towards these aims, the contributions in this Special Issue reflect a wide range of methodological approaches to multimodal research and practice—from case studies to corpus-based applications— across diverse specialized discourse domains (i.e., law, business, politics, tourism). This innovative collection of papers thus underscores the important role of multimodal research in ESP, which has thus far been largely missing as traditional ESP research has focused primarily on written texts

Multimodal Analysis in Academic Settings. From Research to Teaching

This volume presents innovative research on the multimodal dimension of discourse specifi c to academic settings, with a particular focus on the interaction between the verbal and nonverbal in constructing meaning. Contributions by experienced and emerging researchers provide in-depth analyses in both research and teaching contexts, and consider the ways in which multimodal strategies can be leveraged to enhance the effectiveness of academic communication. Contributors employ both quantitative and qualitative analytical methods, and make use of state-of-the-art software for analyzing multimodal features of discourse. The chapters in the fi rst part of the volume focus on the multimodal features of two key research genres: conference presentations and plenary addresses. In the second part, contributors explore the role of multimodality in the classroom through analyses of both instructors’ and students’ speech, as well as the use of multimodal materials for more effective learning. The research presented in this volume is particularly relevant within the context of globalized higher education, where participants represent a wide range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Multimodal Analysis in Academic Settings contributes to an emerging fi eld of research with importance to an increasing number of academics and practitioners worldwide

Introduction

Several questions arise when carrying out research on multimodality: Can we defi ne a semiotic system of image or gesture? How do these systems interact with the system of human language? How do people make meanings by linking text (both written and oral) with images, graphs, equations, gestures, facial expressions and gaze in communication instances? What are the ‘affordances’ of the several modes to contribute meaning? And here we would add some more: Is it possible to fi nd specifi c combinations of the several modes with just one meaning in a certain genre (as an aggregated accumulation of many actual multimodal instances)? Moreover, is it possible to teach combinations of modes, when teaching a genre? These are some of the questions that will be addressed in the present volume

Estudios de linguistica aplicada Ponencias presentadas al 13. Congreso Nacional de AESLA

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