Collective Map Reading: A Multimodal Perspective

Reading is traditionally considered to be an individual activity related to a written text. In the present study, we will look at a particular type of reading as collective activity: map-reading in peer-group interactions in a French as a foreign language classroom. Drawing from ethnomethodologically oriented Conversation Analysis & Vygotskian Sociocultural Theory, the analyses focus on the multimodal organization of map-reading in order to show a) how map-reading is organized on a multimodal level as a collective action; b) how the map constitutes both a material & a conceptual space for joint action & shared cognition; & c) how talk-in-interaction hinges on this collectively organized activity of map-reading. Adapted from the source document