This research field examines how specific discourse relations in multisemiotic texts—composed of words, graphs, images, and diagrams—contribute to discourse construction and communication. These multisemiotic written texts, which belong to specific cross-disciplinary genres (Parodi 2010, 2015; Parodi, Julio & Recio 2018), combine multiple semiotic systems to convey complex information.

The objective is to analyze the effects of specific discourse relations, such as causal and contra-argumentative relations, in combination with statistical graphs, and vice versa. We also focus on the integrative transition between the verbal and graphical systems within these texts.

These hypotheses have been tested in a series of experiments conducted in Spanish, aiming to identify correlations between multimodal relations and their cognitive processing. The goal is to understand how these relations guide the reader in constructing coherent mental representations of the content.

Current Researchers

• Prof. Dr. Óscar Loureda Lamas

• Dr. Inés Recio Fernández

• Cristóbal Julio, M.A.

Funded Projects

International Summer School Empirical Approaches to Discourse Studies. EmpDis 2019. Cooperation with the University of Costa Rica. Funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD, 2019).

Discourse, cognition and linguistic markers: empirical studies on word processing using the eye-tracking method. Cooperation with the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. Funded by the Chilean funding institution CONICYT (Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica, PII 20150058; 2016-2019).

The construction of the multimodal discourse on poverty in the Colombian media. Cooperation with the National University of Colombia. Funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD, PROCOL-Programm, 2016-2017).