Toward Critical Multimodal Positioning Analysis

• In Event: Toward Critical Multimodal Methodologies: Analytical Tools for Disrupting Hegemonic Structures in Educational Research

Abstract

Purpose
This paper details emerging methodologies of multimodal positioning analysis, integrating the critically-oriented Positioning Theory (PT; Davies & Harré, 1990) with social semiotic multimodality (Kress, 2010) to examine analytical tools that interrogate power as it manifests in contextualized discursive practices like speech and other acts (Author 5-2, 2011).

Theoretical Perspectives
PT is a sociocritical theory that explains discursively produced social dynamics with respect to power; positioning is “a cluster of rights and duties to perform certain actions with a certain significance as acts, but which also may include prohibitions or denials of access to some of the local repertoire of meaningful acts” (Harré & Moghaddam, 2003, p. 5). Varieties of positioning reveal social locations of individuals in relation to others within their unfolding storylines (e.g., self-other; first/second order, forced positioning, etc.; Harré & Van Langenhove, 1991). PT analysis can examine “how people use words (and discourse of all types) to locate themselves and others” (Moghaddam & Harrè, 2010, p. 2); thus, PT analysis can take place multimodally.

Multimodal methodological perspectives cluster into three categories: multimodal discourse analysis, multimodal interactional analysis, social semiotic multimodal analysis. Though these methodologies may be perceived as distinct, there is overlap in their use, their rootedness in social semiotic perspectives, and in the scholars who developed them (Jewitt, 2014); Figure 6 shares these kinds of multimodal analysis, their originating scholars, and a brief description as discussed in Jewitt (2014).

Method of Inquiry
We conducted a literature review seeking empirical research that applied positioning theory or multimodality as theoretical frameworks, analytical frameworks, or both analytical and theoretical frameworks. Initial searches yielded 74 studies. After eliminating duplicates and using inclusion criteria (i.e., peer-reviewed publication, research study, use of PT and multimodality), 18 studies were included in the final review (Figure 7).

Multimodal Positioning Analysis Emerging
In our literature review, we were specifically interested in how these studies utilized theories, and we were interested in those studies that used both PT and SSM jointly with their data to generate novel analytical practices, theory as a dialectical scaffold (Dressman, 2008). Four studies used PT, SSM and other theories as a dialectical scaffold to generate methodological practices termed multimodal positioning analysis (MPA; Table 1).

Significance
MPA provides emerging tools informed by critical theories that address matters of power; our current sociopolitical context as educational researchers is rife with massive challenges that are global in scale (e.g., climate change, economic inequality, armed conflict) as well as those persistent inequities around race, class, gender and sexuality, religion, and more. PT in itself is a critical theory as it considers matters of power as represented in contextualized speech and other acts (Authors 5-1 & 2, 2019). However, we argue that using multimodal positioning analysis would benefit from the integration of critical theories (e.g., race theories, feminisms, queer theories, etc.), especially if used to interrogate systemic injustices such as racism and other manners of oppression and exclusion based on social locations - a movement toward critical multimodal positioning analysis.

Authors

• Katarina N. Silvestri, SUNY - College at Cortland

• Mary B. McVee, University at Buffalo - SUNY