TOWARD INTEGRATIVE METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORKS OF POSITIONING THEORY, SOCIAL SEMIOTICS, AND MULTIMODALITY

Foundational positioning theorists have emphasized the multiple ways that positionings and unfolding storylines can be enacted through the use of speech and other acts. The majority of positioning theory studies analyze positions and storylines in speech. There is, however, a growing body of scholarship that utilizes methodologies rooted in social semiotics, perspectives on multimodality, and other interactional approaches to foreground investigation of the other acts that co-occur within conversations and interactions. This chapter briefly describes methodological approaches such as social semiotic multimodal analysis, multimodal discourse analysis, and multimodal interactional analysis that are used to analyze data across multiple modes. This overview is followed by a review of research studies that have explicitly integrated various perspectives on multimodality with Positioning Theory. Finally, the chapter provides an illustrative table of four published works that apply multimodal positioning analysis to research data. The illustrative table parses out some methodological and theoretical influences related to multimodal positioning analysis as well as aims to help guide scholars toward sources for developing and applying multimodal positioning analysis to data.