Discourse Markers in Doctoral Supervision Sessions: A Multimodal Perspective

Language is a complex system that transfers ideas, feelings, experiences, beliefs, and cultures to others. One of the interactional resources that are utilised to make this transmission more coherent and effective is Discourse Markers (DMs). This monograph analyses these markers in doctoral supervisions but uses a multimodal approach to provide a deeper understanding of these DMs and uncovers potential hidden meanings that would escape a purely verbal analysis. Using a dataset consisting of a corpus of video-recorded doctoral supervision meetings, this book provides an innovative and cutting-edge approach to the analysis of DMs and sheds new light on the complexity and dynamicity of naturally occurring discourse where meaning-making rests on a close coordination of both verbal and embodied conducts. The book makes very useful reading for scholars in the fields of discourse markers, conversation analysis, corpus linguistics and multimodality. It could collaterally be appealing to anyone simply interested in the study of human communication.