Multimodal Communication in Intercultural Interaction

This collection brings together a range of perspectives on multimodal communication in intercultural interaction, bridging cognitive, social, and functional approaches towards promoting cross-disciplinary dialogues and taking research at the intersections of these fields into new directions.

The volume assembles conversationalist, socially oriented, cognitive, and sensory approaches in considering culture as a dynamic construct, co-constituted and (re)negotiated among participants in interaction and filtering it through a multimodal lens, drawing on a range of examples, such as educational settings or online video platforms. Each chapter offers a unique perspective on ＂culture＂ and ＂intercultural,＂ while also situating their own definitions of these labels against those of the other chapters. Taken together, the chapters form a fluid conversation on the nature of intercultural encounters in today’s globalizsd world, as digital environments intertwine with the physical mobility of people, encouraging researchers across these fields to adopt a more holistic multimodal perspective to approach intercultural interaction.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars in intercultural communication, multimodality, sociolinguistics, cognitive and interactional linguistics, and semiotics.

Ulrike Schröder has been Full Professor of Linguistics and German Studies at the Federal University of Minas Gerais since 2006. She obtained her Venia Legendi and PhD in communication studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. Her research areas comprise cognitive linguistics, gesture studies, intercultural pragmatics, and interactional linguistics. She edited and published several books and over hundred articles and book chapters.

Elisabetta Adami, PhD, is Associate Professor in Multimodal Communication at the University of Leeds, UK. Her research specialises in social semiotic multimodal analysis with a focus on issues of culture and translation. She has published on sign-making practices in place, in digital environments, and in face-to-face interaction. She is editor of Multimodality & Society, leads Multimodality@Leeds, and co-organises the Multimodality Talks seminar series.

Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain is a sociolinguist and Professor of German and Applied Linguistics at the University of Alberta, Canada. Among her recent publications are Trans-National English in Social Media Communities (Palgrave, 2017), Multilingualism, (Im)mobilities, and Spaces of Belonging (Multilingual Matters, 2019), and many papers on various aspects of language in use.