Published since May 1, 2014

Multimodal Communication

ISSN: 2230-6587

Edited by: Sigrid Norris

Submit manuscript

About this journal

Objective
In essence, all communication is multimodal: we use language, gesture, posture, and other non-verbal modes often at the same time to communicate. We may use many media when conducting research. We may also use creative ways of jotting down what we perceive, i.e. using poetry and other creative writing or art forms to freeze what we understand. We explain the world we investigate to others in multimodal ways.

Multimodal Communication is a venue for researchers in diverse fields of study, who are broaching communication from an interdisciplinary perspective; exploring diverse and multimodal ways to conduct research and illustrate findings. The Journal is interdisciplinary and open to papers from anthropology, through to art, math, psychology, science, sport, and beyond.

Although wide in disciplinary scope, all articles have to develop multimodality in some way. An article may use visuals/writing/sound to explore a theme; be highly theoretical and explain a philosophical point relevant to the study of multimodality; or may be based on an empirical study integrating a number of modes.

Multimodality of communication processes related to such disciplines, as

Anthropology
Art
Mathematics
Psychology
Science
Sport
Visuals
Writing
Sound
and others

Article formats
Style of exposition is not standardized, authors may send research articles, essays, visual essays or other creative pieces

Your Benefits

Your benefits

Bridging between theoretical and empirical research
International outreach of the journal
Interdisciplinary methodology
Comprehensive outlook on multimodality of communication processes
Broad topics covered by the best researchers

Abstracting and Indexing

Multimodal Communication is covered by the following services:

Baidu Scholar
CNKI Scholar (China National Knowledge Infrastructure)
CNPIEC - cnpLINKer
Dimensions
EBSCO Discovery Service
ERIH PLUS (European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences)
Google Scholar
IBR (International Bibliography of Reviews of Scholarly Literature in the Humanities and Social Sciences)
IBZ (International Bibliography of Periodical Literature in the Humanities and Social Sciences)
Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST)
J-Gate
JournalTOCs
KESLI-NDSL (Korean National Discovery for Science Leaders)
MLA International Bibliography
MyScienceWork
Naver Academic
Naviga (Softweco)
Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishers
Primo Central (ExLibris)
Publons
QOAM (Quality Open Access Market)
ReadCube
Scilit
SCImago (SJR)
SCOPUS
Semantic Scholar
Sherpa/RoMEO
Summon (ProQuest)
TDNet
Ulrich's Periodicals Directory/ulrichsweb
WanFang Data
WorldCat (OCLC)
X-MOL
Yewno Discover

Supplementary Materials

Mouton_journal_stylesheet

Topics

External Links

Ahead of Print / Just Accepted

Ahead of Print / Just Accepted

Volume 13 (2024)

Issue 1 Special Issue: The Multimodality of Cringe Comedy in Screen and Digital Media Productions; Guest Editors: Nashwa Elyamany and Deena Shazly Elshazly

Volume 12 (2023)

Volume 11 (2022)

Volume 10 (2021)

Volume 9 (2020)

Volume 8 (2019)

Volume 7 (2018)

Volume 6 (2017)

Volume 5 (2016)

Volume 4 (2015)

Volume 3 (2014)

Volume 2 (2013)

Volume 1 (2012)

Recent Special Issues

CiteScore	0.7	2022, Scopus (Elsevier B.V., 2023)
SCImago Journal Rank	0.260	2022, SJR (Scimago Lab, 2023; Data Source: Scopus)
Source Normalized Impact per Paper	0.711	2022, CWTS Journal Indicators (CWTS B.V., 2023; Data Source: Scopus)

More information about journal rankings

Submit

Submission
Online Submission of Manuscripts

Your benefits of publishing with us

Insightful reviews
Optional open access publication
Accepted papers will be published online first as DOI-citable, forward-linked articles for quickest possible visibility for the scientific community
Every article easily discoverable because of SEO and comprehensive abstracting and indexing services
Secure archiving by De Gruyter and the independent archiving service Portico

Submission process

All articles are double-blind peer-reviewed. To send a submission for Multimodal Communication, please go to https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/dgmc, register and submit your contribution to the new online system
Print / online publishing

Please note

Contributions submitted to this journal must be written in clear and concise English
Only material that has not been sent elsewhere for review can be reviewed　
Only unpublished material can be accepted, and authors may not republish their paper in the same or similar form
Length of articles depends upon many things and we would like to see a variety of different kinds, formats, and styles of articles (word-count can be anywhere up to about 7,000 or even 8,000 words). What counts is the substance and how well developed the article is for what it is trying to achieve
How many images you will need will depend upon the data that is presented and the style of article chosen. Some articles may have no images at all, while others will have more images than words; and there will be much variety between these extremes. It all depends upon what is being discussed
Referencing style: De Gruyter Mouton
Formatting: Please keep formatting simple as we will re-format in-house. We prefer if you do not use templates, but a regular .doc-type file

Style guide for reviews

If you are interested in writing a review for us, please contact Shri Ramakrishnan via email at　shri018@gmail.com with the subject line ‘Multimodal Communication’
Reviews should be around 1,500 words long
Authors are responsible to gain permissions/copyright for art-work
Before submitting a paper please get familiar with our Publication Ethics Statement and our copyright agreement
Once your article is accepted you have the option to publish it open access
Our repository policy allows you to distribute 30 PDF copies of your published article to colleagues (the PDF has to include the information that it is an author's copy). Please also feel free to distribute the link to the online abstract
If you have any general questions please visit our FAQ page for journal authors

We look forward to receiving your manuscript!

Hybrid Open Access

Authors have the option to publish their article under an open access license. The standard article processing charge for a hybrid open access article is 2,000 Euro (plus VAT if applicable). Please note that corresponding authors from institutions with which we have a transformative agreement, can publish open access without paying the fee. More information on the eligible institutions and articles can be found here.

Editorial

Editorial Board

Editor
Sigrid Norris; School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Victoria University of Wellington; New Zealand

Editorial Assistant
Jarret Geenen, Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, Radboud University; Netherlands

Review Editor
Jesse Pirini; School of Management, Victoria University of Wellington; New Zealand

Editorial Board

Elisabeth Adami; University of Leeds, UK
Najma Al Zidjaly; Sultan Qaboos University; Oman
John Bateman; Bremen University; Germany
Emilia Djonov; Macquarie University, NSW; Australia
Gaëlle Ferre; Chemin de la Censive du Tertre; France
Rodney H. Jones; City University of Hong Kong; China
Rick Iedema; University of Technology Sydney; Australia
Pia Lane; University of Oslo, Norway
Jay Lemke; University of California, San Diego; USA
Carmen Daniela Maier; Aarhus University; Denmark
David McNeill; The University of Chicago; USA
Meredith Marra; Victoria University of Welington; New Zealand
Sarah Pink; Loughborough University; UK
Pirkko Raudaskoski; University of Aalborg; Denmark
Martin Reisigl; University of Bern; Switzerland
Jürgen Streeck; The University of Texas at Austin; USA
Theo van Leeuwen; University of Technology Sydney; Australia
Karen Wohlwend; Indiana University; USA

Volume 13 Issue 1

January 2024

Publicly Available February 29, 2024

Frontmatter

Page range: i-ii

Download PDF

Editorial

January 24, 2024

Introduction: the multimodality of cringe comedy in screen and digital media productions

Nashwa Elyamany, Deena Shazly Elshazly

Page range: 1-3

Abstract

The millennial moment reflects an occupation with truth aiming for clear interpretations of the surrounding reality. Owing to the political conditions at the turn of the twenty-first century, both media and literary forms showed considerable interest in documentation. As inspections of truth yield no precise results, documentation shape-shifted into self-reflective presentations of social and personal failings. According to Patrick (Wöhrle, Patrick. 2021. Two shades of cringe: Problems in attributing painful laughter. Humanities 10(3). 99. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/h10030099.), media has developed patterns of presentations that irritate rather than settle the viewers’ down thus destabilizing the conventional sender–message–recipient format. Interestingly, literary treatments have shown similar tendencies towards more integration of the spectator. Engagement with social or political conditions stems originally from a gap between what we know and what we see which engenders humour at many occasions based on superiority or incongruity. In post-millennial times especially with the Covid-19 outbreak, feeling strange, awkward or embarrassed are feelings of the mundane. Here, cringe comedy is a forerunner. Cringe humour holds deep sense of incongruity once attending to the ambivalence the term carries. Humour, which is supposedly a tool of both pleasure and relief, becomes rather a trigger of some painful visceral affect that ‘cringes’.

Research Articles

February 19, 2024

Handle with care! teachers in Egyptian cringe comedies: a multimodal analysis

Amany Y. A. A. Youssef

Page range: 5-29

Abstract

For almost a century, several Egyptian comedies have set up cringe-worthy power-sensitive encounters between struggling low-paid teachers and spoiled rich and powerful students, often leading to negative portrayals of teachers and student-teacher relationship. One play, Madraset el-Moshaghbeen ‘School of the Rowdies’ (1971), has long been held accountable for student misconduct across the country. A 2008 film with a loosely similar theme, RamaDan Mabrouk Abul-Alamein Hamouda, has received a much warmer welcome as a harmless light comedy. This paper brings these two comedies into focus and probes into the management of cringe in filmic text based on the Benign-Violation Theory of humor as well as Baldry and Thibault’s (2006. Multimodal transcription and text analysis: A multimedia toolkit and coursebook with associated on-line course. Equinox ) Multimodal Transcription Model. Optimizing for the four dimensions of psychological distance (temporal, social, spatial, and hypothetical) would help control the benignity of embarrassing violations and free the audience to enjoy the humor. Alternatively, minimizing psychological distance would evoke audience empathy with the violated teacher character and may block audience amusement. Audience reactions through the comment field on strategic clips from the film and play on YouTube would reveal whether a cringe-inducing scene has evoked amusement, vicarious embarrassment, or both. The paper proposes an inventory of the features that would contribute to adjusting psychological distance to achieve the desired effect. These features intersect with the four dimensions of psychological distance, narrative and stylistic choices, as well as the multimodal affordances of filmic and embodied expressions.

January 30, 2024

Cringe witnessing in post-millennial stand-up comedy performances by Ali Wong and Ali Quandil

Deena Shazly Elshazly

Page range: 31-49

Abstract

Cringe comedy, wittily disseminating truth through the interplay between the verbal and contextual, centralizes vicarious/embarrassment as its endpoint through levels of para/linguistic incongruity and social superiority. This paper focuses on the stand-up comedian presentation along with paratextual elements that document the sociopolitical situation in two different cultures contributing to the process of perception on the part of the gazing audience. The paper questions the spectatorial gaze through post-millennial media practices that pertain to the visual among other visceral affects thus diminishing the role of the active witness whose role is beyond watching. The act of witnessing, globally foregrounded and requested by the turn of the twenty-first century, is investigated within the structure of stand-up comedy to figure out whether or not the spectator is an active witness or a by-stander. For this purpose, the study applies Andy Lavender’s model of performance modalities to stand-up comedy performances by the American Ali Wong and the Egyptian Ali Quandil; Don Wong and Mawdoa Hareemi Shweya ( Some Feminine Stuff ) in 2022 and 2021 respectively. Lavender’s model proposes that four modalities (the emotional, physical, discursive, contextual) turn the actor/performer into the physical medium of communication to the audience.

February 21, 2024

Kefaya Ba2a as cringe comedy and the multimodal humorous stunts of the podcast’s communitas

Dina M. Oleimy

Page range: 51-63

Abstract

The aim of this research is to investigate how Egyptian podcast Kefaya Ba2a (That is Enough!) is a good instance of cringe comedy that aims at critising and commenting on social issues in a sarcastic manner. This research presents an interpretive reading of the podcast as a cultural practice that leads to creating a discourse (or narrative) that provides different/alternative knowledge breaking social norms. The meanings and themes delivered through the podcast’s narratives manage to create a communication code that is shared and negotiated by the Kefaya Ba2a digi-communitas on the podcast’s Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/kefayaba2a). The analytical framework of this research is based on the frame that both Kress and Van Leeuwen propose through their theory of multimodal communication (Kress, Gunther & Theo Van Leeuwen. 2001. Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication . Arnold Publishers). The theory suggests a four-strata-frame that focuses on different multimodal resources that contribute to meaning-making. This research investigates the different semiotic resources that all combine to create the discourse of Kefaya Ba2a which takes humour as its major tool to deliver certain messages. It also explores the effect of Kefaya Ba2a ’s discourse on its audience who have the chance to respond to it on the podcast’s Facebook page. Different response patterns are demonstrated to show how Kefaya Ba2a ’s discourse turns to into a user-generated content that opens the opportunity for new readings of the original discourse. In this regard, multimodality is investigated to show how audience communicates with the themes and topics the podcast tackles using multimodal resources to generate their readings.

February 20, 2024

Cringe humor in Egyptian TokTok: multimodal critical discourse analysis of selected comic strips

Nohayer E. Lotfy

Page range: 65-78

Abstract

After the January 2011 revolution, Egyptian artists had the opportunity to express their ideas more openly. One of the major productions that started in 2011 in Egypt was TokTok , a comic magazine for adults. During the period of 2011–2015, TokTok issued fifteen issues that incorporated a collection of comics and comic strips created by different Egyptian artists. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether cringe humor has been an integral part of the drawings and stories presented in TokTok and how this type of humor reflected the socio-cultural and political scene in Egypt during that period. For this paper, Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006. Reading images: The grammar of visual design . Routledge) model of multimodal analysis was applied to selected comics from the fifteen issues of TokTok to investigate possible elements of cringe humor as depicted in this Egyptian graphic magazine. Major results show that elements of cringe humor are not evident in all analyzed comics.

(Deutsch)

View latest issue

Online ISSN: 2230-6587
Type: Journal
Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
First published: May 1, 2014
Publication Frequency: 3 Issues per Year
Audience: Researchers interested in multimodal communication and other related topics