Multimodality in academic language: Aspects of the lexicogrammar of presentation slides

Abstract

The paper approaches academic talks or conference presentations (CPs) as a research- process genre which is based on the interplay of the written and spoken modes. The aim of the study is twofold: (1) it attempts to present an in-depth overview of research on multimodality in relation to academic language, and (2) it offers a (mostly quantitative) analysis of slides from PowerPoint presentations. The slides are approached as a platform for the study of so-called visual lexicogrammar. The research is rooted in Halliday’s systemic-functional framework involving the concept of language functions; it also draws on the genre-based approach to discourse analysis (Bhatia 1993, Martin 1997, Swales 1990, 2004) and multimodal theory as elaborated by Iedema (2003), Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) and O’Halloran and Smith (2011). The findings suggest that the visual lexicogrammar is realized through the interplay of visual and scriptural images; scriptural images dominate over visual images, primarily performing a discourse-structuring role in the slides by signalling the TMRAD’ stages.