ABSTRACT

Lectures prevail as a ubiquitous teaching and learning method across universities worldwide. Whereas lectures have been conceptualized from language-centred perspectives, lectures' materiality as linked to their socio-cultural and historical meanings have been scarcely explored. To address this gap, we tackle the materiality of communication in ten live recorded lectures – collectively viewed more than 1,000,000 times – uploaded by ‘top-ranked’ universities in India, Japan, Russia, Egypt, Palestine, Spain, the USA, the UK, Italy and Canada, on their websites or YouTube media channels. The materiality we refer to comprises the key things/artefacts and bodies in the lectures. A multimodal semiotic analysis of non-verbal and material elements of a lecture is applied on the videos to first ‘map’ its material ingredients, and then explore associated meanings that form socio-material assemblages. The findings point at a few salient thing and body characteristics, such as the monofocal lecture platform, the omnipresent blackboard, the underrepresentation of female lecturers, and the low diversity and use of digital technology. We discuss these via the ‘body and thing idioms’ (Goffman, Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. New York: The Free Press, 1963) that mediate lecture hierarchies, historicity, meaning making and engagement, calling for wider acknowledgement of multimodality and socio-materiality in university practices.

摘要

讲座作为一种无处不在的教学和学习方法在世界各地的大学中盛行。虽然讲座是从以语言为中心的观点被概念化的，但几乎没有探讨讲座与其社会文化和历史意义相关的物质性。为了弥补这一差距，我们在十场现场录制的讲座中解决了交流的重要性 - 总观看次数超过 1,000,000 次 - 由印度、日本、俄罗斯、埃及、巴勒斯坦、西班牙、美国、英国的“一流”大学上传、意大利和加拿大，在他们的网站或YouTube 上媒体渠道。我们所指的物质性包括讲座中的关键事物/人工制品和身体。对讲座的非语言和物质元素的多模态符号学分析应用于视频，首先“映射”其物质成分，然后探索形成社会物质组合的相关含义。调查结果指出了一些显着的事物和身体特征，例如单焦点演讲平台、无所不在的黑板、女性讲师的代表性不足以及数字技术的多样性和使用率低。我们通过“身体和事物习语”（戈夫曼，公共场所的行为：关于聚会的社会组织的笔记）来讨论这些. New York: The Free Press, 1963) 调解讲座的层次结构、历史性、意义的形成和参与，呼吁在大学实践中更广泛地承认多模态和社会物质性。