Language socialization (LS) has documented how individuals, in and through language- and multimodality-mediated activity, develop rich linguistic and sociocultural competence related to specific discourse communities (Duranti, Ochs, & Schieffelin, 2012). Despite its ethnographic methodological commitment to both the micro and macro aspects of analysis (Garret, 2017), the role of multimodal semiotic resources beyond vocal language in the socialization process has remained largely under-examined. This is especially critical in the contexts of sciences (e.g., physics), as scientific socialization is naturally multimodal in which the multimodal semiotic resources complement language when individuals develop scientific knowledge and identity. This paper presents how a multimodal semiotic approach—developed in the discourse study of sciences (e.g., O’Halloran, 2015; Lemke, 1998)— offers LS a powerful analytical method for examining the dialogic nature of physics socialization which interlinks past experiences and present on-going involvements, to future responses that all can occur across multiple learning spaces. It focuses on what kinds of challenges the multimodal semiotic method may involve when transcribing and analyzing physics socialization activity. Video-recorded data come from a language socialization project which studies how international graduate instructors and undergraduate students, through their intertextual readings of multimodal resources, construct and compete for the disciplinary expertise in physics. I will first explain the theoretical and methodological intersection between LS and multimodal semiotic approach. I will focus on one LS pattern: intertextuality and contextualization from the perspectives of transcription and data analysis. Discussion will be centered on: (1) the sequential structure of physics socialization built by verbal language, mathematics symbolism and equations, gestures and body movements, and experiment materials; and (2) physicists’ embodied contextualized practice through intertextual readings of all relevant multimodal semiotic resources (e.g., visuospatial displays of physical events). Findings suggest physicists’ (re/pre)contextualization of multimodal cues is part of the socialization process of becoming members in physics communities.
