Nexus Analysis in a Cardigan: Softening Multimodal Edges for the Ivory Tower

• In Event: Whose Modes Matter? Creating Robust, Peer-Reviewed Publishing Pathways for Multimodal Scholars

Abstract

As scholars committed to multimodal inquiry, particularly using nexus analysis (e.g., Scollon & Scollon, 2003) to explore the spatialized, embodied micromoments of meaning-making, we have and continue to encounter systemic resistance within the academy. We are often required to anchor our approaches in more institutionally palatable methods, such as narrative inquiry or ethnography, to sustain scholarly legitimacy and advance our research to publication.

The methodological constraints highlight a prominent tension between innovation and ivory tower expectations. While multimodality offers transformative ways to examine lived experience through image, movement, sound, gesture, and spatial interaction, academic publishing remains largely governed by monomodal, print-centric norms (Wendling, 2023). In our experience, advisors, reviewers, and editors have often demanded that we couch our work in traditional qualitative frameworks to meet perceived standards of rigor, coherence, and relevance. As a result, multimodal scholarship is frequently forced to masquerade under the language and logic of methodologies that were not designed to support its epistemological aims.

Drawing from our own scholarly experiences, we reflect on the compromises we’ve made to pad our multimodal analyses with accepted methods to satisfy publication demands. These methodological add-ons, while at times generative, have been on occasion strategic necessities rather than innovative amalgamations. In the hierarchy of academia, research and career advancement can hinge on adherence to dominant methodological norms or at least roots in epistemologies that are approved by those in power. The result is a kind of academic and print-centric gravity that pulls us back from the expansion that multimodality offers to both theoretical frameworks and methodologies.

In our proposal, we show how the constraint affects emerging scholars. Authors 1 and 2 have experienced rejection based on multimodal methodological approaches, and we frequently receive questions from reviewers on the legitimacy of our analyses because it’s NXA. So many more of us have unfortunately learned to dilute or reframe our inquiries through the lens of more conventional methods because it widens the path toward acceptance.

We ask ourselves and each other, What is lost when multimodal approaches are diluted to be more palatable for editors and those in positions of power in the academy? What is missed when embodied, spatial, and multimodal data must be filtered through textual description alone, defeating the purpose of this approach? In what ways is the field of education stymied by shelving rather than innovating multimodal methods?

We see this shelving process as ultimately harmful to innovative research practices in the field of education. In recent work shared here, we critique NXA for limitations that may reinforce dominant norms. Rather than shelving it, we position multimodal approaches as guideposts to more innovative and critical research. Ultimately, we call for critical reflection on how academic norms stymie the field of education by diluting or rejecting multimodal approaches.

Authors

• Casey M. Pennington, SUNY Cortland

• Amy Walker, Kent State University