ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests a broadening of a multimodal approach to include matter/material as proposed in social semiotics. It also suggests a move from merely representing structure to focusing on agential processes in interactions between human and non-human entities in social practices. Analyzing oral research genres and practices entails paying attention not only to textual and contextual characteristics, but also to the interactional features of speaker/audience, speech/visuals, the verbal/non-verbal behaviors. Although successful performance at conferences is critical for knowledge dissemination and sharing in academic disciplinary fields, conference-presentation genres have tended to be eclipsed by research-paper genres both as research topic and as classroom genre. The chapter closes a brief analysis of the vignette and some suggestions for the teaching and learning of conference-presentation genres. The vignette is an aggregated narrative that draws on several similar events at a number of conferences.
