Hi Ilaria. I'm sorry to disagree with the two previous answers by Sergio and Weimin, but I assure that the suggested readings have nothing to do with your specific question and are not relevant at all with MDA.

To start off, my suggestion is that you read

Multimodal Discourse Analysis: Systemic Functional Perspectives (2004) edited by Kay O'Halloran. It's old, but it is foundational and basically sets out to introduce the field of multimodal discourse studies within SFL. Some people wrongly refer to another foundational book, that is the celebrated Reading Images (2006, second edition), by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen. Impossible to udnerstand what multimodal studies are and where they come from without this reading, but please be informed that this is NOT about multimodal discourse analysis - that is a strand iniatiated more systematically by Kay O'Halloran in the early 2000s. Much stuff has been circulating from O'Halloran's edited collection, but I always suggest novice readers in multimodality to start from it all began.

You may also wish to selectively read chapters from The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis edited by Carey Jewitt (2nd edition, 2013, the first edition, 2009, includes less chapters) and/or as the best introduction with clear and concise explanations of the different strands within multimodal approaches to semiosis of communication (including MDA) is the excellent Introducing Multimodality (2016), written by Carey Jewitt, Jeff Bezemer and Kay O'Halloran.

These are basic and most useful readings to my knowledge.

hope this helps!

Dear Ilaria Vergina,

This link could be of help: Article Action and Embodiment Within Situated Human Interaction

My research interest is on integrating game studies approaches with multimodal discourse analysis in studying video games and the player experience: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781351184779/chapters/10.4324/9781351184779-1

Hi Ilaria. I'm sorry to disagree with the two previous answers by Sergio and Weimin, but I assure that the suggested readings have nothing to do with your specific question and are not relevant at all with MDA.

To start off, my suggestion is that you read

Multimodal Discourse Analysis: Systemic Functional Perspectives (2004) edited by Kay O'Halloran. It's old, but it is foundational and basically sets out to introduce the field of multimodal discourse studies within SFL. Some people wrongly refer to another foundational book, that is the celebrated Reading Images (2006, second edition), by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen. Impossible to udnerstand what multimodal studies are and where they come from without this reading, but please be informed that this is NOT about multimodal discourse analysis - that is a strand iniatiated more systematically by Kay O'Halloran in the early 2000s. Much stuff has been circulating from O'Halloran's edited collection, but I always suggest novice readers in multimodality to start from it all began.

You may also wish to selectively read chapters from The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis edited by Carey Jewitt (2nd edition, 2013, the first edition, 2009, includes less chapters) and/or as the best introduction with clear and concise explanations of the different strands within multimodal approaches to semiosis of communication (including MDA) is the excellent Introducing Multimodality (2016), written by Carey Jewitt, Jeff Bezemer and Kay O'Halloran.

These are basic and most useful readings to my knowledge.

hope this helps!

Hi Ilaria, I do agree with Maria, those references that she mentioned are the most important ones in order to understand multimodality. If you are interested somehow in methods for analyzing multimodal materials (videos), just let me know :)

I found David Machin's Introduction to Multimodal Analysis a good introduction

Ignatius G.D Suglo , I agree, it is a good introductory textbook, very clear and with many relevant case studies. I also use this textbook in some of my classes and students usually love David Machin's style and clarity, this is 100% sure. However, I'd like to point out that David's standpoint is CRITICAL multimodal discourse analysis - that is something that I personally like and apply myself in my studies but that for methodological reasons comes as a second step and/or development of multimodal discourse analysis.