Multimodal Literacy and Joint Construction of Knowledge in Talk-in-Interaction

ABSTRACT This study aims to describe a multimodal literacy event and demonstrate how, in this event, it is possible to capture the social and interactional work of joint construction of knowledge. The talk-in-interaction segment analyzed consists in the reading of a chart in a technology lab. The sequential analysis focuses on the participants’ efforts to undertake the reading activity, revealing that the interactional segment is: a) a multimodal literacy event, in which the participants negotiate a procedure for reading an image (a graphic), in a written space other than paper (the computer screen); and b) an instance of joint construction of knowledge, considering that the participants develop a satisfactory reading procedure for their situated purposes, which enables them to obtain with some precision the information they are seeking.