Qualitative research quality in multimodal research

Dicks, Bella ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0402-0485 2025. Qualitative research quality in multimodal research. Flick, Uwe, ed. The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research Quality, Sage,

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Abstract

Multimodal qualitative research studies meaning-making in all its manifestations. Its data are not only verbal but also non-verbal, such as images, sounds, textures, gestures, movements, tastes, smells. ‘Mode’ is a term that refers to these varied means of expression, and multimodal researchers study how we use them to produce meaning. They do not treat verbal modes of speech and writing as communicatively superior to the non-verbal modes; all modes are considered meaningful (see Energici and Schöngut-Grollmus, Chapter 6, this Handbook). Furthermore, modes are studied in combination, moving away from earlier specialisms such as visual sociology, image analysis or ethnographic film. Multimodal research has been rapidly increasing in recent years, partly due to proliferating forms of digital communication surrounding us. These highlight the frequently non-verbal ways in which we make meanings today. Yet qualitative researchers’ interest in non-verbal data pre-dates the digital age and it would be wrong to suggest it is technologically determined. Rather, it follows on logically from certain fundamental concerns of early qualitative research, as we shall see. Multimodal research is still a young and relatively unformed field, which is changing rapidly and remains difficult to define. Nevertheless, three differing intellectual traditions can be said to lie at its roots (Dicks, 2019). Whilst avoiding the suggestion that these are sharply delineated, their distinctive epistemological commitments enable aspects of research quality deserving of discussion to be highlighted. We shall consider why researchers within these foundational traditions turned independently to the study of multimodality at roughly the same time, around the 1990s–2000s. We shall also see, nevertheless, that their theoretical roots lie in longer-established disciplines. Saussurean and Hallidayian linguistics inspired social semiotic approaches, whilst American symbolic interactionist sociology and conversation analysis provided the impetus for multimodal ethnomethodology (see Demant and Halkier, Chapter 16, this Handbook). Multisensory ethnography, however, started from anthropological studies of the senses in different cultures and then moved in more multisensory and phenomenological directions. It is not useful, however, to set up artificial barriers between approaches which in fact share some core foundational intellectual commitments. They define quality in characteristically distinctive ways, as we shall see, but have in common certain fundamental quality concerns.

Item Type:	Book Section
Status:	Published
Schools:	Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Publisher:	Sage
ISBN:	978-1-5296-1051-2
Last Modified:	03 Feb 2025 15:00
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/175128

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