There has been much interest in the notion of embodiment within literacy research over the past decade or so, coinciding with a broader turn toward the affective dimension of human experience within the social sciences. Several strands of research have developed along somewhat different epistemological dimensions. Sociomaterial approaches focus on the body’s relational engagement with objects, texts and people and how they shape the nature and process of literacy-as-event (Burnett & Merchant 2018) while multimodal literacy scholars have investigated embodiment as corporeal resources (Lim, 2020, p. 2) in an attempt to map sensory literacies (Mills, 2016) within an increasingly digital literacy terrain. Yet this intense focus on embodiment and the body and theoretical advances in its relation to literacy has not been matched with the same level of methodological innovation. Drawing on a study of home literacy practices of secondary-aged youth in Singapore, in this talk I explore embodiment at the intersection of theory and method in literacy research. The teenagers in the study were video recorded in their home for one hour on four occasions each while they were engaged in various literacy activities. They wore a sensor (Shimmer3 GSR+) which recorded their electrodermal activity. In addition, their facial expressions were recorded and analyzed using an automated facial expression analysis software (iMotions, version 10.0). The question I aim to pursue in the talk is not so much what the measures ‘tell us’ about literacy, but rather how we may conceptually integrate new methodologies into the study of embodiment in literacy.

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