UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics

This article critically engages with the concept of ‘spectatorship’, which is linked to viewing while being static, aiming at acknowledging its multimodal dimensions. Anchored on Goffman’s dramaturgy and frame analysis theory, as well as Kress’s theory of multimodal communication and representation, it presents an apt interpretative and methodological framework for accounting for what is usually not accounted for: the meanings that arise across all modes of communication. By drawing upon audio-visual excerpts of museum encounters, the analysis brings to the fore the embodied visiting and viewing practices performed by the visitors while in the galleries. It argues that the museum visiting experience is a multimodal event, comprising a range of modes of communication and representation, which are ‘orchestrated’ and ‘animated’ through the agentive action, ‘the performance’ and ‘choreography’ of the visitors, who simultaneously use a range of modes of communication, beyond gaze and looking,  within the social context of the visit.

Abstract: This paper acknowledges the multimodal and social nature of the museum experience. In this paper, we advocate the view that, within this multimodal frame, visitors are agents of their own design for learning as they engage with the exhibition and each other, redesigning the stories told by the curators. Audio-visual data from two individual projects in the UK illustrate the multimodal, embodied and social nature of the museum experience, which is often assumed to be ocularcentric and logocentric, and suggest that visitors learn by constantly making selections and transformations of the exhibition design, based on their own interests and responses to the various prompts emerging in and through social interaction. As such, the data analysis foregrounds the modes of movement, gaze, deixis and posture, which, alongside speech, are integral elements of the learning experience. Shifting our research focus on visitors’ redesigns of the exhibition poses a challenge to the curatorial design and has implications for exhibition-makers as it calls into question the assumptions of what should be learned and why, as well as how the resources in the exhibition space should be organised.

Keywords: Museums, Multimodality, Designs For Learning, Visitors, Social Interaction

By treating the museum visit as a multimodal, social event unfolding in the galleries, our paper will critically engage with the concept of ‘cultural participation’, which is often linked to ‘viewing’ or ‘going’ to a museum. It draws upon two sets of audio-visual data collected for two projects, both conducted partially or entirely in the UK, with pairs or groups of visitors in two museums in London, UK: the Museum of London and the Wellcome Collection.

The analysis draws upon methodological developments within sociology and in particular Erving Goffman’s dramaturgy and frame analysis theory (1963; 1971), as well as Gunther Kress’s (2010) multimodal and social semiotic theory of representation and communication. It is through bridging together these two theories, ethnomethodology and multimodal social semiotics, that we engage in a much needed interdisciplinary conversation. The virtue of these perspectives is that, by contrast to structural and deterministic sociological approaches, they permit us to theorize the agency of visitors in museum visiting. The article proposes an appropriate interpretative and methodological framework which illuminates the social worlds of museums.

Both the theoretical framework and the methodological tools employed allow the traditional mind-body dualism to be overcome in order to explore the modes and performances of visitors’ encounters, as they arise in and through interaction with people and exhibits. It argues that visitors’ participation can be approached by taking into consideration the ways in which different modes of communication and representation are ‘orchestrated’ and ‘animated’ through the agentive action, ‘the performance’ and ‘choreography’ of the visitors within the social context of the visit. By drawing upon multimodality, we show how talk, gesture, gaze and elements of the
space and place blend together and contribute to the multimodality of participation, accounting for the ‘orchestration’ of multiple modes of participation.

This paper presents eight-year-old children's 'eye views' of the archaeological site of the Agora in Athens, Greece, based on drawings made during an educational programme on site. Complementing a significant body of research on drawings, we introduce a multimodal social semiotic perspective to explore drawings as 'designed' accounts of children's 'eye views'. We argue that each account arises as an agentive response to their interests and prompts in the environment framing their experience, such as features of the site and the educational programme. Based on four drawings, we identify salient elements of children's experience in their representations which we analyze as material realizations of (i) their interests and agency, (ii) their visual and embodied engagement with the archaeological site, and (iii) the framing of the educational task and overall programme. Our findings contribute to research on the importance of the visual in learning.