A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of TED Talks in Health Care

This paper aims to analyze the multimodal discourse of TED Talks in the healthcare domain. This analysis looks for opportunities for positive, negative, and neutral messages. The paper also offers ways to correct social inequalities and summarize best practices in health care. Studies examining verbal and nonverbal semiotics require a more fine-grained analysis since nonverbal parts play crucial roles in TED talks and cannot be neglected. The main features of the analysis are: to identify discourse patterns and message types, to overview the meanings of these patterns, and to propose ways to achieve social justice. With mixed qualitative and quantitative approaches, verbal and nonverbal elements are analyzed. They show a joint effort in meaning-making, which unravels how the speaker conveys ideas and affects the audience. The result shows the characteristics of different semiotic resources and ascertains how they generate meaning to reinforce the academic speaker’s message. It suggests that the adopted theoretical framework applies to the multimodal discourse analysis of public speaking. The speaker makes the speech more convincing and offers a comprehensive meaning delivered in public, academic speaking, establishing a rational and practical image.