Multimodal Communication in Intercultural Interaction

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

The volume brings together conversationalist, socially-oriented, cognitive, and sensory approaches in considering culture as a dynamic construct, co-constituted and (re)negotiated between 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 globalized 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.