The modern concept of multimodality envisages diversity (multiplicity) in the presentation of information channels (auditory and visual) in communication. This fact presents multiple opportunities for a simultaneous, multidimensional interpretation of the variability in an individual’s speech when used in different types of discourse, which in the future could potentially lead to a cross-modal approach in research. Multimodal oral discourse (sounding speech) is characterised by a segmental (verbal) component and a multitude of non-segmental (paraverbal, prosodic) parameters which supplement the verbal component in real time use. The visual channel, on the other hand, contains a series of extraverbal elements that complement and refine the information conveyed.
In the article the multimodal presentation of speech is illustrated by examples of Bulgarian children’s speech.
Key words: multimodal linguistics, speech data.
