The goal of this course is to develop an understanding of multimodal interaction analysis, with a major focus on video analysis, and with attention to comparison across different languages and cultural settings. Co-present interaction involves the integration of linguistic constructions (lexical and grammatical structure and content), voice qualities and intonation, gestures and gesticulation, eye gaze, as well as other embodied behaviors, and actions with present objects relevant to the ongoing discourse. In this course we will survey theoretical literature on multimodal interaction, and work with video data to build analytical skills through a focus on languages recorded in their natural discourse settings including videos produced by the students in the class. Practical exercises will involve tools for video recording, editing and subtitling, and the transcription and coding of both verbal and non-verbal semiotic actions. Data sessions and video watching sessions will be conducted throughout the term in which we will hone analytical skills of “looking,” “listening,” and “noticing” in the video data and the formulation and testing of hypotheses grounded in the turn-by-turn sequences of the transcribed multimedia. Requirements are engagement of course readings, active participation in class discussions, keeping a journal of notes from data sessions and video watching sessions, and a term project that can involve a student’s own data or data from class archives. In taking a holistic, comparative/cross-cultural perspective on language in multimodal interaction, we will not be able to easily fall back on intuitions from our own language or culture for interpreting what is going on in an interaction and are then challenged to ground our hypotheses on the signs speakers make public in the sequences of actions/responses in the videos, the details of linguistic morphology, and the glosses available to us in transcripts. This course is heavily focused on methods to provide you with tools and experience for working with interaction data from different languages and societies, providing for productive comparison across the typological and cultural variability of the world’s languages.