Analyzing Multimodality in Specialized Discourse Settings

Contemporary society has witnessed radical changes in the field of communications in terms of how messages and meanings are disseminated. Digitalization and the Internet have signalled an exponential rise in the circulation of multimodal texts in which different semiotic resources are orchestrated together to construct meaning in all areas of social life, across languages and cultures, and in diverse specialized discourse domains. This has foregrounded the need to examine the semiotic functions, affordances, and issues at stake in a range of multimodal discourse forms, while simultaneously highlighting the importance of critical multimodal literacy in audiences and learners.

This volume develops and extends pioneering research on the intersection between multimodality and specialized discourse. Seven newly commissioned studies offer innovative perspectives on multimodal research methodologies and applications in a variety of ESP (English for Specific Purposes) contexts for practitioners and scholars alike. The volume offers a glimpse at future directions in this dynamic and ever-evolving area of investigation focusing on the synergy between verbal and non-verbal modes of communication in the digital age. Each chapter explores an original area of application: academic, economic, scientific, marketing, legal, medical, and political. The contributors approach multimodality from a range of theoretical and methodological viewpoints including synchronic and diachronic corpus-based and corpus-aided studies, critical discourse analysis, and systemic functional linguistics. Analytical tools such as multimodal (critical) discourse analysis, multimodal transcription, and multimodal annotation software capable of representing the interplay of different semiotic modes - speech, intonation, direction of gaze, facial expressions, gesturing, and spatial positioning of interlocutors - are employed. The diversity of research strands contained in the volume illustrates just some of the vast areas of multimodal knowledge dissemination that are still unmapped. As a cornerstone of communication, multimodality needs exploring in all its facets. These contributions aim to further that cause.

Veronica Bonsignori (PhD, English Linguistics) is a research fellow in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Rome "Foro Italico". Her interests are in the fields of pragmatics, audiovisual translation, multimodality, and ESP. She has published several articles in national and international journals and collections. She has also authored the monograph 'English Tags: A Close-up on Film Language, Dubbing and Conversation' (2013) and co-edited with Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli the volume 'Multimodality Across Communicative Settings, Discourse Domains and Genres' (2016). Her most recent publications include the paper 'Using films and TV series for ESP teaching: A multimodal perspective' (System, 2018) and 'A multimodal analysis of spoken medical English in expert-to-expert interaction in TV programmes' (Ibérica, 2019).

Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli (PhD, Applied Linguistics) is Associate Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Pisa. Her research focuses primarily on corpus-assisted discourse analysis to investigate the lexico-grammatical, discursive, pragmatic, rhetorical, multimodal, and intercultural features of discourse in academic, professional, and digital settings. She has published extensively in leading international journals including 'Journal of Pragmatics, English for Specific Purposes', and 'Text & Talk'. She co-edited the volume 'Multimodal analysis in academic settings. From research to teaching' in the Routledge Studies in Multimodality Series (2015), as a well as a Special Issue of System entitled 'Multimodal perspectives on English language teaching in higher education' (2018).

Denise Filmer (PhD, Translation Studies) is a research fellow in English language and translation at the University of Pisa, Italy. Adopting multimodal critical discourse analysis approaches, her research investigates the role of translation in media representations of political discourse, gender and sexuality, and the current migrant crisis. She has authored a monograph entitled 'Racial Slurs: Last Linguistic Taboo and Translational dilemma' (Lambert Academic Publishing 2012), contributed to volumes published by John Benjamins and Routledge and published widely in international journals, including 'Perspectives: Studies in translatology, Cultus: International journal of intercultural mediation and communication', and the 'European Journal for Language Policy'.