This article describes Multimodal Simultaneous Analysis, a social semiotic approach designed to synchronously analyze multiple modes (visual, oral, textual, gestural) of data simultaneously to understand how they transact, interact and play in concert.
Multimodal Simultaneous Analysis is a social semiotic approach that extends existing multimodal methodologies by coordinating analysis of moment-to-moment multimodal communication. We describe the methodology and its emergence through our analysis of video data from nine preschool teachers' 12 storybook enactments (108 observations).
Our findings describe the six analytic steps of Multimodal Simultaneous Analysis (i.e. study design, preliminary monomodal analysis, data matrix across modes, analytic transactional questions, jottings and theorizing patterns) and show how we applied them to understand how teachers synchronously mobilize multiple sign systems in storybook reading. We draw from rich data in our own analysis to show how this methodology makes teachers' complex deployment of multimodal expression visible, creating a scaffold for scholars to adapt this approach to their own multimodal research.
This methodology facilitates rich analysis of complex multimodal expression often obscured when analysis centers on single modes.
Multimodal Simultaneous Analysis creates a process for qualitative scholars to generatively work with the dynamic complexity of multimodal data.
As technology expands researchers' abilities to collect rich audiovisual data and carry out complex analyses increases. This methodological innovation will give us new insights into complex, dynamic semiotic expression.
Multimodal Simultaneous Analysis is a novel methodological approach that extends current multimodal methods for enhanced qualitative analysis of multiple streams of signifiers simultaneously in dynamic expression.
