Joint Seminar I Multimodal conduct and professional discourse identity in oral advocacy: Insiders’ perspectives

In research on professional legal communication, there is growing interest in multimodal aspects of communication, including the use of gesture, facial expression, gaze, and speech, among others. Such research suggests that multimodal conduct can play an important role in the construction of a professional discourse identity. However, this approach has yet to be extended to the academic context to examine law students’ multimodal conduct in simulated oral advocacy exercises (the activity known as ‘mooting’). In this presentation, we report on the findings of an eight-month ethnographic study of a team of law students from a Hong Kong university preparing for an international mooting (oral advocacy) competition. In particular, we examine the insider perspectives of members of the team - academic and professional coaches and their students - in order to understand how they perceive the role of multimodal conduct in oral advocacy presentations. We provide a thematic analysis of oral feedback from coaches on students’ presentations as recorded in observers’ field notes and video recordings of team meetings and practice hearings. The analysis demonstrates that coaches are sensitive to (and students struggle with) aspects of multimodal conduct, including gesture, gaze, and facial expression, among others. Participants see these multimodal forms of expression as resources to be strategically exploited in accordance with clearly established legal cultural norms. The findings have implications for research on multimodality in academic/professional communication and for pedagogy in English for Academic Legal Purposes.