achieving multimodal cohesion during intercultural conversations

how do english as a lingua franca (elf) speakers achieve multimodal cohesion on the basis of their specific interests and cultural backgrounds? from a dialogic and collaborative view of communication, this study focuses on how verbal and nonverbal modes cohere together during intercultural conversations. the data include approximately 160-minute transcribed video recordings of elf interactions with 4 groups of university students who engaged in the following two classroom tasks: responding to a film excerpt and a music video. the results showed that individual participants engaged in the processes of initiation and response to support or challenge one another using a range of communication strategies. the results further indicated that during the discursive activities, the small groups achieved multimodal cohesion by deploying specific embodied resources in four types of participation structure: (1) interlock, (2) unison, (3) plurality and (4) dominance. future research may broaden our understanding of the embodied interaction that is involved in intercultural conversation.