Abstract Humor is present in most instances of human to human interaction and has often been studied by discourse analysis (Long and Graesser 2009). These studies have taken several perspectives but have often ignored the multimodal aspect of humor even more if the genres selected have been in oral academic discourse. In this paper we focus on a genre that has rarely been studied, the conference plenary lecture. Taking as a theoretical model Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) we look at the semiotic resources employed by two senior researchers: one Spanish, Dr. Jose Manuel Blecua and one British, Dr David Crystal. They were plenary speakers in two different conferences. In their speeches Dr. Blecua dealt with Spanish as a Foreign language and Dr. Crystal with English as a Foreign language. Although there does not seem to have been any point of contact between them, their lectures show a number of similarities especially with regard to the semiotic resources they use in order to produce humor.

Abstract Building on the argument that practices between teacher and learners in classrooms may differ (

Despite the proliferation of regulations governing health and content claims on food packages, customers continue to be confused and sometimes deceived. One reason for this is that most regulations adopt a rather restricted, language-centric view of what a claim is, a view that focuses on how claims represent reality as opposed to what claims “do”, the kinds of actions and human relationships they make possible. This paper introduces a perspective on package claims that takes account of their performative and multimodal dimensions. The pragmatic force of a food package, it argues, always depends on multiple conditions such as the identities of manufacturers, retailers and customers, the conditions under which packages are encountered, and the way multiple semiotic modes such as language, graphics, colors, fonts, the shape of packages, and even the shape and texture of the food itself interact. The multimodal dimension of claims is not limited to the intratextual links among different modes and different materialities on the package, but also the intertextual links among the elements on the package and other modes and materialities in the environments in which customers make purchasing decisions. A multimodal view of package claims attempts to understand how claims are situated within specific material contexts, specific social actions, and specific social practices, and how they function to index social identities for manufacturers, retailers, customers, and even government officials who make and enforce regulations governing their use.

Abstract When people draw on the available modal resources (e.g. gestures) in specific contexts over time, those resources come to display regularities. The more a community uses and regulates those resources, the more fully and finely articulated their regularities and patterns become. Modes, organised by regular means of representation, are constantly transformed by users, depending on what the community needs. This paper discusses the way semiotic resources and practices, i.e. social actions with a history, used by sign language signers in visually oriented communities, as well as the research in such domains, have been marginalised. The paper reflects some of the main reasons for such marginalisation and argues how marginalisation is a result of some crucial misunderstandings in relation to (signed) languages, language learning, deafness, and disability. Research into human interaction, in general, has taken a multimodal turn. This paper suggests, through practical examples, how multimodally oriented research could enrich its view by recognising communication-practices inside visually oriented domains, as well as research in the area, instead of considering D/deaf and sign language related research as a specialised area of research.