Multimodal Communication and Meta-Modal Discourse
Kristy Beers Fägersten, Elin Holmsten, Una Mary Cunningham · IGI Global eBooks · 2010
This chapter presents an analysis of recordings of workplace interactions conducted with videoconferencing software. Video-conferencing offers users the widest variety of channels, or modes, of interaction, combining video with voice chat, text chat, whiteboard capabilities and collaborative document manipulation. The video-conferencing environment is therefore conducive to multimodal communication, defined in this chapter as the collaborative use of any one of these modes or combination of modes within one communicative event. The standard form of multimodal communication is a combination of video, voice chat and whiteboard application. The use of other modes is shown to reflect distinct communicative functions. Communicating via multiple modes can be technologically demanding and consequently affect usability, potentially necessitating the use of meta-modal language among video-conference participants. Overtly attending to the modes of communication during online interaction is therefore shown to be part and parcel of video-conferencing, serving to initiate repairwork and facilitate the progression of communication.