Multimodality, multisensoriality and ethnographic knowing: social semiotics and the phenomenology of perception

Abstract

In this article I consider the potential for combining multimodality and anthropologically informed sensory ethnographic methodologies. I focus on a comparison between anthropological and multimodality approaches to the senses, the relationships between images and words, and ethnography. In doing so I reveal some of the tensions and fundamental differences between these approaches before then considering if and/or how these might be reconciled.