Multimodal Discourse Analysis

By adopting a comparative perspective, the present paper aims at investigating how and why differences are found in the dubbing and redubbing of the major motion picture E.T. The Extraterrestrial by Steven Spielberg. In particular, the analysis focuses on the translation and retranslation of culture-specific references (CSRs) found within the translation and retranslation of this major motion picture. The corpus comprises three different versions of the movie script: the original version in English (1982), the dubbed version in Italian (1982) and the redubbed version, still in Italian (2002). After an initial quantitative analysis of the three different scripts, a qualitative analysis was carried out adopting Vinay and Darbelnet's (1958/2002) taxonomy to categorize the translations of CSRs, as cases of Direct Translations or Oblique Translations. The study confirms Berman's (1990) Retranslation Hypothesis on literary retransmissions and indicates that the two decades that divide the first and second dubbing of the movie have been culturally and linguistically crucial, widening the cultural and linguistic horizon of contemporary Italian viewers.

This study is part of an ongoing investigation into what we would like to identify as a unique, and so far underexplored, form of knowledge dissemination by means of online academic bionotes. By focusing on academic online identity construction, we intend to highlight the core discursive mechanisms underlying such a practice as well as differentiate specific features from more familiar ones characterising general social networking public profiles (Fitzpatrick 2015). Although a relatively new convention in the academic workplace, the practice of scholars crafting their own academic identity through online personal branding has been gaining momentum during the past decade. This is mainly due to the rapidly changing world of work and the proliferation of online social networking sites (SNS) which have blurred the boundaries between work and personal lives (Garzone 2015; Duffy/Pooley 2017). With the Web becoming a workplace, where involvement in networking practices and the construction of a social presence are no longer a choice, scholars are now seriously reflecting on the importance of defining personal branding tools for the dual purpose of individual advancement and knowledge dissemination.
Consequently, by exploring scholarly knowledge sharing practices occurring on academic SNSs, the main aim of this paper is to investigate the extent to which the social construction of academic identity overlaps and interdiscursively blends together with previously investigated and more traditional processes of disciplinary knowledge dissemination (KD) (Hyland 2012a, 2015). This study, in fact, is taking a broader approach to KD by using Hyland’s own perspective as a starting point, especially when he argues that: "In pursuing their professional goals and constructing knowledge, academics engage with others, and because of this, discourses carry assumptions about knowledge, relationships and how this should be structured and negotiated" (Hyland 2012a: 175).
Hence, our approach explores these renegotiated discourses as enacted by renewed digital knowledge sharing practices such as those occurring in dynamic Web 3.0 environments. To this end, the investigation is based on the analysis of a multimodal corpus comprising a collection of profiles crafted by university scholars and posted on the academic social networking site (ASNS) known as Acadmia.edu. This platform, which is not an educationally affiliated organization, foregrounds the entrepreneurial mission of “accelerating the world’s research”3 as it is essentially designed for academics whose main intention is to share research papers and interests as well as other general information concerning affiliation and academic engagements. Also part of Academia.edu’s mission is to afford scholars the opportunity to monitor the impact of their research through deep analytics (Price 2012) while tracking the work of other academics they choose to follow (Thelwall/Kousha 2014). Established in 2008 in San Francisco by Richard Price as part of the Open Science movement, to date, Academia.edu is reported having nearly 31,000,000 registered account-holders contributing over 20 million papers and attracting nearly 26 million unique visitors a month.
Against this backdrop, it is quite evident that data collected from ASNSs are of major interest for linguistic exploration, mainly owing to the impact that the above-mentioned academic social networking practices may have on how language is devised and packaged in order to facilitate knowledge dissemination. For the purpose of shedding light on this still grey area of language innovation, the online profiles collected from the Academia.edu site are the object of this study as they comprise multimodal instantiations of both knowledge dissemination and self-branding resources.

This paper investigates how large multinational corporations use multimodal meaning-making resources to communicate a trustworthy corporate identity. It combines insights from Forceville’s work on pictorial and multimodal metaphor (Forceville 1996, 2002; Forceville and Urios-Aparisi, 2009) and key features of Fuoli and Paradis’ (2014) model of trust-repair discourse to examine the discursive dynamics of trust- building in a corpus of promotional corporate videos produced by some of the world’s largest corporations. The analysis shows that multimodal metaphors are deployed as key persuasive devices to promote three fundamental attributes of the companies’ trustworthiness, i.e. ability, integrity and benevolence.

This paper sheds some light on how trustworthiness is constructed through multimodal resources in corporate discourse and contributes to our understanding of the discursive dynamics of trust, which is still limited and fragmentary (Fuoli and Paradis, 2014; Linell and Keselman, 2011). But the study also carries implications for cognitive linguistic theory, in particular for conceptual metaphor theory. Three theoretical issues requiring further discussion are highlighted: (i) the distinction between conventional and novel metaphor and the question of ‘deliberateness’ (Steen, 2008), (ii) the usefulness of the notion of metaphor scenario (Musolff, 2006) as a descriptive tool in the realm of multimodal discourse, and (iii) the adequacy of Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) model versus Blending Theory (Fauconnier and Turner, 1996, 1998; Grady et al. 1999) for describing novel multimodal metaphors and accounting for the evaluative function they can perform in persuasive multimodal discourse.

Keywords: pictorial and multimodal metaphor, conceptual metaphor theory, blending, trust, corporate multimodal discourse

Almost all students or novice researchers, upon entering the academic world, know that eventually they will be invited to prepare and present an academic poster. This task is often met with mixed feelings not only because it is often the entry point into academic life, but also because what the genre entails is not always clear to the novice author (Hay & Thomas, 1999). The poster session itself is often met with mixed reviews both from the participants as well as the viewers, because of several physical limitations, and the fact that still today it considered less prestigious to present at a poster session than at a paper session (Swales & Feak, 2000; Swales, 2004). De Simone et al. (2001), for example, have noted that the traditional poster presentation can at times be frustrating for authors and can leave them, as well as the audience, with a sense of incompleteness. This negative evaluation of the genre leads De Simone et al. (ibid.) to consider the academic poster as a communication tool that is frequently inadequate for the message it carries. Probably triggering this idea is the fact that each poster generally attracts a limited number of viewers and sometimes not enough attention is given to the poster session by conference organizers. A poster presenter does not have the advantage of having a committed audience and has to compete with other presenters for space, visibility and attention (Morin, 1996a, 1996b), and if poster presenters do manage to attract someone's attention, they have to accept the fact that in most cases, the interaction will be brief and superficial; a frustrating experience to say the least. Sometimes instead, the interaction might carry on longer than expected, which is at the same time rewarding and challenging. The possibility to interact personally with an author, with no time limitations, in fact means that viewers are given the chance to pose numerous questions and comments which, if particularly challenging, might put the poster presenter into difficulty. If paper presenters have to endure five or ten minutes of question time, poster presenters are asked to remain available and interact with viewers for one or two hours at a time, sometimes even longer. Staying alert and attentive for such a long time can be tiresome and stressful. Fortunately, as mentioned before, this smaller arena is also traditionally more informal than other sessions. This colloquial, almost intimate aspect of the poster presentation is what makes the genre so unique and challenging at the same time.

Halliday’s description of register as ‘a variety of language, corresponding to a variety of situation’, with situation interpreted ‘by means of a conceptual framework using the terms “field”, “tenor” and “mode”’ (Halliday, 1985/89: 29, 38) is revisited to reflect on the theoretical work the term ‘register’ does within the SFL paradigm. In doing so, we recognize that the concepts of a linguistic theory are ‘ineffable’ (Halliday, 2002 [1988]); i.e. that ‘providing definitions of a theoretical term ... requires that it be posi- tioned vis-à-vis other concepts in the theory’ (Hasan, 2004: 16). It follows that chang- ing the position of ‘register’ in the theory changes the nature of the concept. So while alternative uses of the term ‘register’ – such as in Martin’s genre model (e.g. 1992) and Halliday’s model – may advance a shared programme for language description and explanation as a route to social change, they must be seen as more than terminologi- cal variants. One consequence of ...

Le fotocopie per uso personale del lettore possono essere effettuate nei limiti del 15% di ciascun volume/fascicolo di periodico dietro pagamento alla SIAE del compenso previsto dall'art. 68, commi 4 e 5, della legge 22 aprile 1941 n. 633. autorizzazione rilasciata da CLEARedi-Centro Licenze e Autorizzazione per le Riproduzioni Editoriali-Corso di Porta Romana, 108-20122 Milano-Tel.

La magnitud y profundidad de la desigualdad política, social y económica que existe entre los Estados Unidos y Puerto Rico quedó al descubierto para el mundo y en particular para los medios estadounidenses a partir del 17 de septiembre de 2017, luego del azote del huracán María en la isla. Es el interés de esta investigación realizar un análisis multimodal de cinco caricaturas publicadas en medios digitales e impresos de los Estados Unidos a raíz de las actuaciones y reacciones del presidente, Donald Trump, ante la situación de los puertorriqueños durante los meses de octubre, noviembre y diciembre de 2017, posteriores al huracán.

Bumble brands itself as a feminist dating app that’s designed to empower women. According to Bumble’s website, the app was developed to “challenge the antiquated rules of dating” by requiring those who identify as women to initiate communication with men they match with.
But my research shows that Bumble, despite purporting to empower women, leaves many female users feeling frustrated and vulnerable. This disconnect can be linked in part to the ways in which many men engage with online dating apps.

This paper presents the qualitative examination of teacher recruitment commercials over fifteen years to reveal the evolution of education objectives and teacher requirements of the Singapore education system. The commercials analysed comprise ten advertisements that convey messages predominantly via visual or linguistic resources and were selected based on their availability at time of research. Kress and van Leeuwen’s framework to multimodal analysis was employed in examining these commercials.

Semiotic resources in the commercials were examined to reveal meanings conveyed, from which teacher roles, student types and education outcome expectations were identified. These were discussed together with observed representations of ethnicity, gender and power, surfacing the changing teacher requirements and education objectives of Singapore education. The analysis revealed the education system’s progressive objectives, from imparting content and knowledge to character development and instilling of aspirational notions, equipping students with right values, solid knowledge and future-ready skills, remodelling teachers into skillful educators and ultimately inspiring mentors. The paper concludes with a calling to extend the analysis scope under social semiotics and to further examine changing student profiles, which shall surely illuminate future paths of Singapore education.

Keywords: advertising, education objectives, multimodal communication, Singapore education system, sociolinguistics, teacher requirements, teaching

This article proposes an interdisciplinary framework designed to analyse discourse, affect and surveillance. By revisiting the "omniopticon" (the many watching the many) and proposing “civeillance” as an affective dynamic of surveillance culture, it considers communicative mechanisms that reflect the interchangeable functions and normalisations of surveillance technologies in personal and public spaces. When 17-year-old Austin Haughwout was using his drone to film aerial shots of Hammonasset Beach in Connecticut, 23-year-old Andrea Mears accused him of photographing people on the beach. Mears physically attacked Haughwout, called the police and accused him of assault. During the attack, Haughwout used his phone to record the incident without Mears’ knowledge. The video was used by the police who arrested Mears for assault. The recording then featured in news stories online, where Mears was subjected to sexist abuse. The following analysis shows how affective practices and embodied meaning-making are personally, socially and technologically embedded within discursive processes of representation. Contrary to non-representational theories of affect, this framework sees affective-discursive practice as a multimodal complex of communicative components. Dialogical mechanisms of discourse and contextual complexities function through physical practices and cultural conducts, which are ideologically influenced by social relations and power structures. Discourse both affects, and is affected by, the feelings, emotions, minds, ideologies and interactive experiences that we have in personal spaces and social contexts.

Keywords: Discourse; affect; surveillance; gender; ideology; omniopticon; civeillance; drones

Die Zeitschriftenforschung hat sich zu einem produktiven und interdisziplinär verzweigten Arbeitsfeld entwickelt. Auffallend ist dabei jedoch die bislang geringe Beachtung der multimodalen Beschaffenheit des Mediums. Die Beiträger_innen des interdisziplinären Bandes legen erstmals einen besonderen Fokus auf die Text-Bild-Strategien Illustrierter Zeitschriften und setzen diese zudem in Bezug zur gesteigerten Tendenz ästhetischer und kultureller Selbst- und Metareflexion um 1900. So leistet der Band eine stärkere Konturierung der medialen Eigenlogik Illustrierter Zeitschriften vor dem Hintergrund der für das Medium konstitutiven Verzahnung von Bild und Text.

This article introduces the concept of academic social space as a useful construct to understand and interpret the academic language socialization of individuals in English second language academic spaces. Academic social space builds on the concepts of community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and production of space (Lefebvre, 1991). The article then reports on a study that adopted the notion of academic social space to examine the language socialization of one international student in a tertiary institute in New Zealand. Data about this case from various sources including diaries, interviews, class observations, field notes, institutional documents, and video/audio recordings of classroom interactions are presented. The analysis of findings from this study showed the student displayed three differential participation patterns in the three social spaces in which he was engaged. He presented himself as an active participant in his English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course, a silent participant in the first mainstream social space, and a changing silent-active participant respectively in the classroom and online domains of his second mainstream social space. The findings also showed that the concept of academic social space enables thick description (Geertz, 1973) about the language socialization experiences of additional language learners in tertiary contexts. Understanding the various aspects of social space enables researchers, educators, policy makers, and teachers to revisit their notion of space by considering it as an active, dynamic, and organic participant in the learning process of second language learners.

"RESUMEN
La comunicación entre el compositor de música y su audiencia no es en modo alguno directa. Está fuertemente intervenida por agentes que controlan aspectos críticos del proceso. Se produce así una compleja intermediación entre los interlocutores, que exige de la negociación y el diálogo a diferentes niveles para que la comunicación pueda consumarse efectivamente. Los nuevos significados que se generan por la intermediación no han sido tomados en cuenta en los estudios musicológicos tradicionales, que tienden a ver la interacción musical como algo dual, unívoco, lineal y simple. Proponemos en este trabajo acercarnos a este problema en el caso particular de la música de conciertos, a partir de las categorías de DISCURSO, DISEÑO, PRODUCCIÓN y DISTRIBUCIÓN que ofrecen Gunther Kress y Theo van Leeuwen (2001) para el análisis de los discursos multimodales.
Palabras clave: composición musical, intermediación, discurso multimodal.

ABSTRACT
Communication between composer and audience is not straight. This communication is strong biased by agents who control critic aspects of the process. This produces a complex intermediation among the interlocutors that requires of negotiation and dialog if communication should be effectively completed. The new significations generated by this process has not been taken in consideration by the traditional musicological studies, who considered the musical interaction as dual, univocal, lineal and simple. We propose in this paper to study the particular case of the concert music starting from the categories of DISCOURSE, DESIGN, PRODUCTION and DISTRIBUTION created by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen (2001) in order to analyze the multimodal discourses.
Key words: musical composition, intermediation, multimodal discourse."

In recent decades, dialogic pedagogy is widely endorsed as a meaningful feature and effective means of teaching and learning. Such pedagogy affords significant opportunities for students to express their thoughts and ideas; to inquire, challenge, clarify, or build upon others’ ideas; and to reason about and weigh multiple arguments and solutions. Notwithstanding considerable progress in the academic field and the development of several promising strategies, dialogic pedagogy is difficult to enact, especially in mainstream classrooms and on a wide scale. Empirical research on the realities of classroom talk, including recently in Israel, has shown that dialogic forms remain scarce. The guiding hypothesis of the present study is that in order to transform classroom talk, it is crucial to take into account the complex, interdependent contexts in which this talk is embedded. These contexts include, for example, students, instructional activity, assessment regime, curriculum, teacher stances, classroom norms, spatial organization, time and more. Changing classroom talk demands attending to all of these multiple, mostly institutionally entrenched contexts.
This complex picture stands in contrast to the many studies of classroom talk that are focused on the level of the spoken text in interaction. This qualitative study aims to address this gap, by investigating a professional development workshop that included teachers, coaches and researchers learning and working together to codesign and develop dialogic instructional units. The group included eight language arts teachers from four primary schools, three instructional coaches, two senior coaches and four members of the research team (including me, serving as one of the facilitators). In this process participants worked together to codesign and trial dialogic instructional units for language arts lessons. During the 2018-2019 academic year, the professional development group met every two weeks (20 meetings in total). Each meeting was held after school and lasted three and a half hours (70 hours altogether). I video-recorded the sessions (except for two that were documented in field notes), collected materials and resources, and summarized events in reflective memos. In addition, 54 lesson enactments were observed and recorded by a member of the research team and me, as well as numerous meetings with teachers, coaches, principals, supervisors and the district advisory board. 
This research setting allowed me to explore interactional, professional and institutional contexts that emerged in the professional development processes and during classroom enactments. In my investigations of these contexts I use linguistic-ethnographic methods, including systematic observation, micro-ethnographic, multi-modal and thematic analyses. These analytic procedures include systematically reviewing the data set to identify recurring themes and issues; transcribing episodes in detail and coding participants’ utterances and actions; selecting episodes for close examination; using linguistic ethnographic microanalytic methods to investigate and track the appearance of topics and ideas, how they were expressed, and by whom.
I focus on three different contexts that influence classroom talk that emerged as central in my data set: teachers’ reading stances, classroom norms and teachers' conceptualizations of dialogic pedagogy.
1. Teacher's reading stances. Expressive and critical reading stances have been shown to support productive dialogue in language arts lessons. In the aforementioned professional development program, rereading discussions were designed to facilitate the development of these dialogic stances among teachers. I analyze nine rereading discussions and identify five reading stances that emerge during the discussions: expressive, critical, instrumental, moralistic, and historical. I examine the negotiation of reading stances and investigate the interactional conditions under which dialogic stances did and did not emerge, and the opportunities and limitations of different reading stances for advancing dialogue. My analysis shows that dialogic stances gained legitimacy during discussions in which participants in professional leadership positions embraced them and the facilitators supported gradual elaborations of the text. In contrast to my initial assumptions, I found that expressive and critical stances sometimes narrow interpretive possibilities, while instrumental and moralistic stances can be generative of dialogue during rereading discussions. I show the potential of cultivating dialogic stances for the promotion of dialogic pedagogy in the language arts and discuss the advantages and drawbacks of rereading discussions as professional development. 
2. Classroom norms. Establishing dialogic classroom norms is an important facet of dialogic pedagogy, as talk is shaped by participants’ expectations and orientations during interaction. In this case study, I problematize the practice of setting classroom ground rules in light of dialogic pedagogy's democratic aspirations. Specifically, I explore the space for dissenting voices within the process of constituting ground rules and the extent to which ground rules regulate teacher (and not only student) behavior. I investigate these issues in the process of negotiating ground rules in a fourth-grade Israeli classroom. During a discussion in which the class reflected on classroom discourse norms, students resisted the teacher's interpretation and even accused her of obstructing their participation, thereby highlighting questions regarding teacher's role and authority in the deliberative process of establishing ground rules. I discuss the problems arising from an ostensibly democratic process of constituting ground rules in which the teacher is beyond criticism and above the law, and the possibilities of developing a more democratic and inclusive process of negotiating and maintaining classroom discourse norms.
3. Teacher's concepts of dialogic pedagogy. Advocates of dialogic pedagogy try to persuade teachers to adopt a certain set of ideas about productive classroom talk. Associated research processes usually begin with researchers' concepts of what dialogue should look like and then examine whether teachers understand and enact them. Following Vygotsky's ideas that concepts are formed primarily through social interaction and that learners are never tabula rasa, I investigate teachers' concepts as they emerged during the professional development workshop. I identify seven concepts, explicate their pedagogical assumptions and tensions, and examine whether and how they were advanced during the professional development by the facilitators. I discuss the contexts that shape teachers' concepts, how they relate to the research literature and which concepts advanced by facilitators resonated with them and why. My examination of teachers' conceptualizations shows that (a) teachers have an eclectic and flexible approach toward dialogic pedagogy, pointing to the conflicting pedagogical needs and pressures they face; and (b) teachers' concepts are embedded within classroom affordances and constraints, pointing to their potential role in bridging between researchers' concepts and the messy realities and limitations of classroom practice.
Beyond the specific contributions mentioned above, my study contributes to theory and practice of dialogic pedagogy in several ways. First, I show that investigating contexts of classroom talk beyond the interactional level can be conducive for advancing dialogic pedagogy. My explorations of the three contexts offer both insights into their complexities and suggest ways of practically influencing them – providing promising directions for future research and action. Second, my study illustrates a systemic approach for promoting dialogic pedagogy. Rather than focusing on individual contexts and strategies currently advocated in the field, my investigation of three different contexts in one research project exemplifies a more holistic approach which also offers insights into the interrelations between contexts. Third, my study shows that teachers' knowledge and perspectives, as well as those of their students, can and should be more central in professional development and research processes. In this regard, my study demonstrates that practitioners' ideas, experience and judgment can be integrated into professional development processes, thus making them a more collective – and dialogic – undertaking in and of themselves.

We analysed 30 English awarded and non-awarded picture books for children depicting families and gender roles, combining an intra-and intertextual corpus-driven approach. Focusing on the pictures, we systematically attempted to answer the following questions: What can be said about the child protagonist in terms of sex, skin colour, and gender preferences? Which persons in and outside of the family are depicted, and what can be said about them in terms of these variables and roles? Do we see instances of positive and negative physical contact? Where do activities take place? Do "arts" and "sports" play a role in the stories? Is the child's imagination stimulated? In the final part we briefly discuss other themes that deserve systematic research in this genre.

Abstract. Nowadays, companies who want to engage environment-friendly consumers increasingly rely on green-economy oriented campaigns. Such categories of (ethical) consumers are numerically increas- ing, and expressions evoking environmental friendliness are becoming particularly trendy. In this vein, words such as ‘sustainability’ have been variously recontextualized/reframed and have become an ‘ought to’ for media-savvy companies ‘with a vision’ — Walmart, the American multinational retail corporation, being a relevant case in point. It is no accident that, on the first Google page for ‘sustainability’, ‘Walmart’ proudly surfaces:http://corporate.walmart.com/global-responsibility/sustainability. The company has made an explicit commitment not just to expand the business but also to improve communities and enhance the sustainability of the products they sell, by encouraging more responsible production practices, while at the same time making product choices more affordable for customers, as reported on its website. However, as the world’s largest company, Walmart is an easy target for attack mainly by environmentalists. Sometimes, Walmart gives its critics grounds for some legitimate criticism in a variety of fields ranging from the supply chain emissions to renewable energy and preserving habitat. Such criticism resonates across the media, owing to their ‘lack of closure’ (Laclau and Mouffe 1985), finalized to offer an unbiased perspective. Against this ‘complexified’ (Macgilchrist 2007) background, our study aims to examine, from a broadly Multimodal and Positive Discourse Analysis perspective, the Walmart website ‘sustainability’ pages with their variety of communicative strategies, advertising ‘responsible’ Walmart positive attitudes to fundamental issues like Energy, Waste, Products and Responsible Sourcing.

This paper presents a multimodal critical discourse analysis of a sample from a larger corpus of multimodal posts about immigration from the social media pages of right-wing populist leaders Donald Trump and Matteo Salvini. Drawing on Van Leeuwen's framework for the representation of social actors, we investigate how multimodal resources contribute to shaping immigration discourse and to its bias, highlighting exclusionary ideologies through the recontextualisation of social practices. Our analysis reveals how the strategic synergy of images, videos, slogan-like language and the social affordances of Web 2.0 enables the two leaders to spread their nativist propaganda and emphasise the view of immigrants as a threat to security. The othering of immigrants as non-natives is enacted through biased representation based on covert racist stereotypes. At the same time, visual anti-immigration rhetoric allows the leaders to "build their people" and self-promote their role as gate-keepers of the nation-state. The rights of men, as citizens of the world, shall be limited to the conditions of universal hospitality. We are speaking here […] not of philanthropy, but of right; and in this sphere hospitality signifies the claim of a stranger entering foreign territory to be treated by its owner without hostility.[…] It is not a right to be treated as a guest to which the stranger can lay claim-a special friendly compact on his behalf would be required to make him for a given time an actual inmate, but he has a right of visitation. This right to present themselves to society belongs to all mankind in virtue of our common right of possession on the surface of the earth on which, as it is a globe, we cannot be infinitely scattered, and must in the end reconcile ourselves to existence side by side: at the same time, originally no one individual had more right than another to live in any one particular spot. Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace

Semiosis, or meaning making, is a complex but important process, which defines human experience. The increase in research interest in the field of communications, media studies, and semiotics has brought a renewed attention to the multifarious nature of meaning in a text. Baldry (2000), Kress (2003) and Kress and van Leeuwen (2001) draw attention to the multimodal nature of contemporary society where meaning is often made through a co-deployment of a combination of semiotic resources. In other words, images, gestures, and sounds often accompany language in semiosis. This recognition of semiotic resources operating independently and interdependently on different levels in a text has ushered in a necessary transformation in the research landscape pertaining to the study of semiosis. The process of meaning making in text is both multifaceted and multimodal. As such, understanding the meaning made in a specific text cannot equate merely to an analysis of the semiotic resource of language, but has to take into account the complex nature of semiosis through both the deployment and co-deployment of various semiotic resources. What this recognition implies is that in order to understand meaning making, it is no longer sufficient to deconstruct and analyze the use of language in a text only. Instead, the operation of other semiotic resources must also be factored in as contributing to the total meaning made in the text.

El texto analiza un presunto contenido discriminatorio, difundido el 9 de abril de 2015 por el medio de comunicación diario “El Nacional”, ubicado en la ciudad de Machala, Ecuador, cuya cobertura es local y su tiraje es de 9105 ejemplares diarios. El estudio parte de un marco conceptual sobre la discriminación hacia jóvenes, identidad juvenil, estereotipos e imaginarios negativos reproducidos socialmente. Luego, se elabora un Análisis Crítico del discurso y al final se exponen las conclusiones sobre un proceso de distinción y exclusión basada en razones de edad e identidad cultural..

This book is an exploration of current approaches to the linguistic, cultural and social interpretation of texts in diverse contexts of English. By investigating an array of different discourses, we aim to bring to the fore a variety of social and cultural representations and to illustrate the way in which represented participants are generally embedded in social, political, and cultural practices through and in the language.
A glance at the contents of the book will immediately reveal that this is an unusual, and maybe uncomfortable, type of academic publication, at least within the complex Italian academic context. Indeed, corpus linguists may well define the volume as an un-‘principled’ collection of texts. However, the rationale behind this purposefully unsystematic assortment of essays resides in the fact that it is only by adopting different, though somewhat contiguous, linguistic, cultural and social perspectives that researchers can comprehensively approach a variety of texts when seeking out the covert meaning-making structures of different discourses.

Taking into account the image and narrative analysis akin to film studies, as well as discourse as per the long-standing tradition of print analysis, this article suggests a dedicated triadic multimodal methodological approach for television news analysis. The precise methodology for best practice qualitative text analysis is as yet poorly defined (Macnamara 2005, 16), but this article proposes a solution to that very concern. This article engages with the methodological challenges of studying television news, and critically reviews several established methods - semiotics, discourse analysis, and the context of media production – but calls for a more holistic approach that better integrates the multimodal nature of television news. I propose a method which allows a blend of the different tracks of television news, from audio and visual to the political economy of these texts. I do so with a view to providing tools for media and journalism students to carry out a beginner’s analysis, but also for more established research to engage with the requirements of studying television news. I then provide an example of how this triadic method can be operationalised by analysing a television news broadcast in relation to the coverage of violence in the context of the 2014 South African election.

Occupy Wall Street was a movement of many faces. Its impact on the public debate was significant, sparking support and criticism from a variety of sources. The occupation of the park, a ‘privately owned public space’, awoke the interest of the media, triggering nationwide media coverage and generating significant online activity.

Behind an almost two-month occupation of a 3,100 m2 park in downtown Manhattan, an element crucial to Occupy Wall Street gaining scale and achieving significant media coverage emerges: Its discourse. Acknowledging that a discourse encompasses a set of ideas, values, identities and activities signified by the use of certain semiotic choices, this paper explores how the different bits and pieces of the Occupy Wall Street discourse play out in the social, political and communication arenas. The methodology is based on empirical and exploratory research. Interviews are conducted with professors, activists, protesters, journalists and editors, most of them based in New York City. Meanwhile a media analysis is performed based on online activity, mainstream media coverage and tag clouds generated out of hundreds of articles from three leading newspapers of various types and political inclinations.

Results reveal a social movement represented by protesters whose one common aspect was their frustration with the economic, social and political systems in the United States. This responds to an ideology named “the critique of capitalism.” Despite lacking a single, unified message, Occupy Wall Street managed to deliver strong semiotic choices behind the narrative of “We are the 99 percent,” ultimately producing a compelling, media savvy discourse.

OWS also accomplished influencing the public conversation by relying on social media networks. This was reinforced by the very occupation of Zuccotti Park, which would symbolically reenact the movement’s narrative and serve as a storefront for journalists to gather constantly changing stories. In contrast, OWS’ depiction in the news varied considerably, showing a constantly shifting and volatile narrative particularly subject to events of a violent or unsettling nature. This generated increased media coverage, but ultimately affected both public support and the movement’s morale. Still, if there is one thing that Occupy Wall Street indisputably achieved, it is bringing back the public debate on the aggravating issue of economic inequality and its repercussions on the American people.

Abstract: our contribution is intended to be a comparative study of two means of exchange, online interaction (OI) and face-to-face interaction, (FI) in order to reveal the particularities of these two forms of exchange. The corpus composed of daily interactions and interactions via Messenger (Facebook), allowed us to compare and contrast these two modes based on the following points: the participatory framework, the rituals 98

résumé : notre contribution se veut une étude comparative de deux moyens d'échanges, l'interaction en ligne (IL) et l'interaction en présentiel (IP), en vue de dévoiler les particularités de ces deux formes d'échange. Le corpus composé des interactions quotidiennes et des interactions via Messenger (Facebook), nous a permis de comparer et contraster ces deux modes en se basant sur les points suivants : le cadre participatif, les rituels (ouverture et clôture), la langue parlée en interaction, la progression thématique, les attitudes et les émotions. Ainsi, les interactions en ligne se présentent comme un lieu d'échanges où les usagers adaptent leur comportement langagier et interactionnel en fonction des modes qu'offre cet espace numérique. Mots clés : interaction en ligne, interaction en présentiel, cadre participatif, rituel d'ouverture et de clôture, progression thématique.

This paper details a multimodal practice of response and transmediation, called a Thought Chronicle, which I employ in my undergraduate work with preservice teachers. I position this intervention in relation to the theoretical discourses of multimodality, social semiotics, and psychoanalytic ideas of dreaming and play.

The purpose of this essay is to address the multimodal nature of Matt Kish’s project “Every Page of Moby-Dick, Illustrated”, where Herman Melville’s 1851 masterpiece is set as paratext. Particular focus is set on the portrayals of Captain Ahab, specifically “Page153”, “Page 465” and “Page 469”. The basic theoretical framework has been offered by Alice Gibbons’ theorization of multimodal cognitive poetics and Sigrid Norris’ systematization of multimodal (inter)action. Useful insight has been lent by Sharon Cameron’s work on allegories of the body in Melville’s writing. The given analysis aims to pinpoint the elements of innovation in Kish’s work with respect to the canonical formal features of the illustrated book and renewing of literary classics in multimodal terms.

Doing drama is a complex interactive process. Drama processes, such as rehearsals, rely heavily on the spoken communication between the participants (such as actors, directors, performance artists), no matter how much gesture and movement is involved. Drama is often thought of only in terms of a final product, such as a performance or a script, rather than as a creative communication and working process that can be spread out over a longer period of time before reaching its final stage. In spite of all the research and analysis dedicated to drama, discursive research has rarely been carried out on theatre practice and its authentic discourse, which constitute part of the everyday working process for theatre practitioners the world over. This paper explores from a discursive perspective what is going on in drama processes and introduces the method I have developed for researching drama processes.

A course I taught at University of Wisconsin-Madison in Fall 2012 and Spring 2013.  Students performed case studies of public memorials in Madison, debated about how memorials should address their publics, and wrote grant proposals accompanied by imovie videos for their own memorial designs.

In this chapter, we extend a usage-based theory of Construction Morphology to the analysis of sign language structure, to address two long-standing categorization problems in sign language linguistics. Sign language linguistics traditionally distinguishes monomorphemic core lexical signs from multimorphemic classifier construction signs, based on whether or not a sign form exhibits analyzable morphological structure ("the Core vs. Classifier problem"). In this tradition, core signs are retrieved from the lexicon, while classifier signs are derived productively via grammatical rules. Sign linguists are also accustomed to classifying discrete and listable aspects of sign structure as language, while aspects of signing that exhibit more holism or gradience are considered to be gesture ("the Language vs. Gesture problem"). These categories of core vs. classifier on the one hand and language vs. gesture on the other derive from a shared source: the assumption that linguistic forms are built up from discrete building blocks. Instead, we analyze multimodal usage events in terms of constructions, conventional patterns of meaning and form containing both fixed elements and variable slots and organized in a structured network. We argue that the Construction Morphology approach leads to a uniform analysis of core and classifier signs alike, without resorting to an a priori distinction between language and gesture.

Обложка журнала рассматривается как образец мультимодального текста. Дается теоретический обзор научной литературы, посвященной изучению мультимодальности в рамках лингвистики. Приводятся определения понятия «мультимодальность». Уточняется терминология, сопоставляется употребление в современном языкознании терминов мультимодальный, поликодовый, креолизированный текст. Особое внимание уделяется особенностям журнальной обложки как самостоятельного жанра. Рассмотрены классификации типов обложек в зависимости от соотношения вербального и графического компонента. Выполнен краткий обзор подходов к изучению мультимодального текста. Обосновывается целесообразность применения к анализу материала системно-функционального и социокогнитивного подходов. Представлены результаты сопоставительного анализа журнальных обложек. Журнальная обложка рассматривается как мультимодальный текст — комплекс вербальной и визуальной составляющей. При этом вербальная составляющая может быть представлена как эксплицитно, так и имплицитно, то есть компрессированно. Показано, что механизм интерпретации смысловой нагрузки обложки может считываться реципиентом двумя способами: либо на основе комбинации вербальной и визуальной информации, либо за счет актуализациии компрессированного вербального компонента с помощью визуальной составляющей. Новизна исследования видится в демонстрации, что изображение с подразумеваемым (компрессированным) вербальным компонентом может представлять собой мультимодальный текст.

A cover of a journal is considered as a sample of multimodal text. A theoretical review of the scientific literature devoted to the study of multimodality in the framework of linguistics is given. Definitions of the concept of “multimodality” are given. The article clarifies the terminology, compares the usage of the terms multimodal, polycode, creolized text in modern linguistics. Special attention is paid to the peculiarities of a magazine cover as an independent genre. Classifications of cover types depending on the ratio of verbal and graphic components are considered. A brief review of approaches to the study of the multimodal text is made. The expediency of applying system-functional and sociocognitive approaches to the analysis of the material is substantiated. The results of the comparative analysis of magazine covers are presented. A magazine cover is considered as a multimodal text, i.e. a complex of verbal and visual components. In this case, the verbal component can be represented both explicitly and implicitly, that is, compressed. It is shown that the mechanism of interpretation of the semantic load of a cover can be read by the recipient in two ways: either on the basis of a combination of verbal and visual information or due to the actualization of the compressed verbal component with the help of the visual component​. The novelty of the study is seen in the demonstration that an image with an implied (compressed) verbal component can be a multimodal text.

French history textbooks occoupy a pivotal position in the colonial fracture. They impart difficult knowledge about the Algerian War of Independence, knowledge that impacts the relationships between the communities of memory in France today. Textbook analysis has focused on their verbal content and, recently, in the work Jo McCormack, on corresponding teaching practices. This article highlights graphic design as one layer of visual knowledge production and primarily contributes to the methology of textbook analysis with an exemplary multimodal analysis. It reveals a hidden narrative about the postcolonial relationship that is not expressed in words.

Children’s multimodal composing represents an important aspect of their oracy practices that are foundational to their later literacy development. Utilizing multimodal discourse perspectives, this study explored the range of multimodal resources that preschool children employed to convey their meaning making when interacting with peers and teachers in an oracy activity, show-and-tell. Through a qualitative analysis of video-recorded interactions, we investigated how preschoolers in Ms. Leticia’s dual language classroom were resourceful in using actions, visual understandings, and language to support their meaning-making and communication around their presentations. Because Ms. Leticia showed flexibility in inviting peer interaction throughout their presentations, students wielded their actional, verbal, and visual modes to respond to audience members’ concerns and requests and performed to recruit their audience members’ attention. This study helps to expand our understanding of children’s literacy development in early childhood settings as supported not only by oracy, but more holistically, through their multimodal composing.

While the sonic logo for McDonald’s i’m lovin’ it campaign has been widely distributed and highly praised, little is known about the actual characteristics and meaning potentials of this particular musical discourse. From the perspective of multimodal discourse analysis, this paper seeks to unravel the discourse of the sonic logo as it appears in a collection of 475 commercials from the first fifteen years of the campaign. By adopting an otherwise rarely found diachronic perspective, the examination reveals how the sonic logo changes over time and thereby produces alternating meaning potentials. To account for these changes, the paper offers the concepts of alteration and adaptation. Based on these concepts, the paper reveals novel insights into how music can perform a determinative role in the multimodal discourse. In addition to the traditional functions of sonic logos, the music serves to engage viewers in appropriating the slogan of the campaign. This process is specified as the production of an emotive, which imply an instigation of an emotional engagement – related to current values and ideologies – beyond the more familiar capacities of music to express and induce emotions.

Die prozessuale Wirkungsweise der Immersion beschränkt sich nicht nur auf technisch-apparative Medien oder computergestützte Mediensysteme, sondern zeigt sich innerhalb zahlreicher Forschungsdiskurse ebenfalls bei analogen oder monomodalen Medien. Die Gradstufen und Ausprägungen von immersiven Prozessen ereignen sich dabei stets über ein bivektorielles Induktionsschema: Entweder wird Immersion maßgeblich über ein mediales Reiz- beziehungsweise Strukturangebot über sensomotorisch fundierte Wahrnehmungsprozesse eingeleitet oder über weitestgehend subjektive, phantasmatisch-imaginäre Annäherungen an ein Medium. Der Immersionsprozess besitzt allerdings nicht nur das Potenzial zur Analyse und Beschreibung spezifischer Rezeptionsprozesse im Verhältnis von Medium, Interface und Rezipient, sondern er lässt sich als eine komplexe Modellannahme zur Beschreibung einer Kulturtheorie medialer Hybride verstehen, die der Medienevolution der letzten Jahrzehnte adäquat Rechnung tragen kann. In Anknüpfung an Ernst Cassirers animal symbolicum und Hans Jonas’ homo pictor formuliert dieser Artikel die These des homo immergens.