A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Linking Metadiscursive Elements in Two Opencourseware Lectures (MOOCs)

Discourse analysis in university lectures has become more and more relevant for researchers in recent years (Pérez-Llantada and Ferguson, 2006). However, the focus of these analyses is usually on linguistic aspects exclusively and holistic approaches including other influential elements also present in communication are limited. This paper aims to explain, from a multimodal discourse analysis perspective, which are the metadiscursive elements employed by lecturers in order to link the different sessions within a course. This type of metadiscourse is essential to achieve a proper connection between sessions; it contributes to better cohesion and creates a clearer message for the student. In our research we will look into metadiscursive instances when used in online lectures, which are part of Yale University's collection of MOOCs, in order to describe possible recurrent patterns and relationships between these elements and paralinguistic and kinesic elements. In order to do that, we will carry out a Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) (Querol-Julián & Fortanet, 2012; Fortanet-Gómez & Ruiz-Madrid, 2014).