„Multimodalität“ und „Räumlichkeit“ in der multimodalen Interaktionsanalyse

Zusammenfassung

We start with describing our idea of multimodality. Multimodality is due to the manifest empirical evidence that all modalities participants use in interaction simultaneously play their role in constituting interaction. Multimodal interaction analysis is our approach to deal and to cope with the manifest modal complexity of interaction analytically. An important and up to now mostly neglected modal resource of interaction is space. Its relevance is expressed in our concept of “socio-spatial positioning” that is closely connected with two other concepts for spatial analysis: “architecture-for-interaction” and “social topography”. Having introduced these concepts theoretically, we briefly present a case study to proof their empirical fruitfulness. The case study focuses on three protagonists who are involved in the performance of a book presentation. During this presentation, the author of the presented book calls them to the stage one by one. We reconstruct how the involved participants are consecutively positioned and position themselves on a small stage in front of the audience. Turning to this complex multimodal process, we show how the participants embody and manifest the characteristics of their social contact(s).