As a fellow rock climber and gesture scholar, I found this book a brilliant contribution to the multimodal discourse analysis of language and the body in space. Kataoka demonstrates how the gravity-defying world of rock climbing is socially constructed through the intricate interplay of eye gaze, bodily movements, specialized equipment, shared expertise and knowledge, and the surrounding environment. Kataoka compellingly showcases rock climbing as an ‘embodied institution’ where meaning is jointly achieved through the integration of semiotic resources.
While this book is grounded in the contextual specifics of Japanese rock climbing, Kataoka provides sufficient background information to make the terminology and practices accessible to non-climbers. From explaining the technical differences between indoor top-roping and outdoor lead climbing to the extensive discussion on ethical principles of the climbing community, the author adeptly unpacks the nuances of this world. This work holds great value for scholars across disciplines interested in opening new horizons for understanding the integration of physicality, language, material objects, and shared experiences in the co-construction of meaning.
Kataoka conducts rigorous multimodal analysis of climbing discourse across diverse contexts including climber-belayer interactions, expert-novice instruction (chapters 3 and 4), narratives (chapters 5 and 6), and gossip relating to mountaineering ethics (chapter 7). This range of discourse genres highlights the centrality of verticality in the climbing environment, revealing differences in spatial construction across settings and opening innovative frameworks for multimodal analysis.
The heart of the book is the analysis of group narratives presented in chapter 7. This analysis vividly illustrates the role of embodied multimodality in the intersubjective process of creating chronotopes through bodily representations, as the climbers integrate their fragmented recollections into a unified spatial narrative through collaboration. Reconstructing the mental map of the climbing route through a detailed analysis of the conversation between nine climbers makes for an excellent example of the joint, intersubjective construction of spatial imagery within the climbing community. The combination of schematic route maps, textual transcripts timed with photos of the climbers’ gestures and interactions establishes distinct participatory roles in the dialogue and perspective-taking strategies. This analysis stands as an exemplary demonstration of Kataoka's ethnography, enriched by an expertise as a member of the Japanese climbing community, and makes a significant contribution to our understanding of spatial cognition and meaning-making.
Capturing the intricate bodily nuances of communication is challenging yet crucial for understanding its semiotic richness. Kataoka's extensive methodology for representing co-speech gestures, body language, and spatial dynamics provides invaluable techniques and insights for researchers examining the integration of verbal and physical modes of interaction. Through discourse analysis of a gesture-intensive environment, Kataoka makes significant contributions to linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics by demonstrating how the close examination of the interplay between speech and gesture in situated interaction can enrich our understanding of embodiment, sociality, and cognition. The book will serve as a key reference for the integration of approaches that intertwine spoken and embodied aspects of language into discourse analysis.
