Macro-Moves, Gestures, and Questions: Multimodal Engagement in Three-Minute Thesis Presentations

This chapter examines the three-minute thesis (3MT) presentation genre, focusing on both linguistic and multimodal elements with special attention to gestures. This chapter begins with an overview of the 3MT genre and our framework for multimodal genre analysis. This chapter then identifies common rhetorical moves of the genre and examines how gestures are exploited within each move and how they are integrated with the engagement feature of questions. Through multimodal genre analysis, this chapter highlights how gestures interact with linguistic resources to enhance communicative effectiveness and engage a broader audience. This chapter, therefore, contributes to a deeper understanding of the interactions between language and gesture to construct meaning and achieve rhetorical goals, and it advances methodological frameworks for multimodal genre analysis. Finally, this chapter discusses implications for 3MT presenters and instructors in conveying research effectively to a non-specialized audience.