This article discusses three qualitative research traditions concerned with ‘multimodal’ and ‘multisensory’ methods, namely: i) ethnomethodology, ii) multisensory ethnography and iii) social semiotics. These have been selected not because they are the only research domains in which qualitative multimodal methodology is currently developing, but because a comparison between them allows for discussion of methodological and theoretical issues of key importance for advancing the field. Each is argued to rely on a distinctive underlying epistemological commitment – to the study of action, experience and communication, respectively. Each combines linguistic and non-linguistic data to try and get closer to the object of research, but involve different ontologies of closeness. The differences include how the object of research is defined, the role of context, the nature and locus of meaning, the nature of evidence and the relationship between researcher and the object/subject of research. These in turn have implications for how time and space are conceived. The discussion ends by indicating how the respective insights and advantages of each might be synthesised to suggest a new, integrated perspective for this kind of qualitative research.