论"话语的秩序"--福柯话语理论的一次重要转折

《话语的秩序》是福柯话语理论中具有重要过渡意义的一个文本。其中,福柯不仅深入分析了话语的内部结构及其特征,而且分析了话语外部的控制因素,将话语与权力、社会机制联系在一起,从而开拓了话语的外部空间。这既是福柯对自己研究的一次总结,也昭示了福柯话语研究中新方法论的出现。     

多模态话语分析理论的课堂教学研究

随着经济全球化、信息技术化、交际多模态化的转变,越来越多的中国大学英语教师认识到多模态的重要性,并将多模态教学方式应用于教学中。大学英语课堂不再局限于单一模态的语言教学,而是应用多种模态,包括音频、视频、PPT、互联网、模拟实验室等,给予学生多样化的课堂学习氛围,很大程度上激发了学生的学习兴趣。文章探讨多模态话语分析理论在课堂教学中的应用情况。     

福柯的作者-功能说及其理论基础

在巴特喊出“作者死了”之后不久,福柯就提出了“作者一功能”理论,深入推进了对作者问题的研究。与巴特等人论述“作者死亡”不同的是,“作者一功能”说的理论基础是福柯的考古学方法,它与福柯对主体进行的批判紧密相连,它是福柯主体批判的一部分,或者更确切点说,它是后者的一个具体化、一个例证。福柯的“作者一功能”理论对当今的文学和文学理论研究具有深刻启示。     

Books Received and Short Notices

This paper looks at how HSBC banking group represent themselves in their externally oriented discourse as a brand combining the global and the local. Drawing on a variety of samples such as history brochures, advertisements and websites, the study combines quantitative and qualitative methods in its analysis of how visual and linguistic elements function to construct the HSBC brand. It is argued that branding in this case relies on a stereotyped version of the local that is used to endow the brand with a “human touch” and create brand affinity with a globalised audience. In cognitive terms, the company is seen to blend the two schemas of the global and the local and to metaphorically emulate perceived consumer identities to the same end.     

A multimodal discourse analytic approach to the articulation of Martini’s “desire” positioning in filmic product placement

Product placement constitutes an amply used tactic in a marketer’s Integrated Marketing Communications roster. Its merits in circumventing negative attitudes to advertising and in integrating brand values in sociocultural narratives in TV and cinematic filmic discourses have been repeatedly stressed. However, little attention has been placed thus far in the idiosyncratic mode that is scrutinized in this paper, that is product placement by leveraging uncertainty, surprise, postponement and displacement as defining characteristics of the discourse of desire. The analysis of the discourse of desire that unravels in a flirting sequence from the blockbuster movie “Hitch” demonstrates that although the concerned brand (Martini) is minimally visible in the analyzed scene, yet it attains to appropriate as part of its core DNA in “stealth” mode the above characteristics of desire by demarcating the cultural field of flirtation. The offered cultural analytic addresses this idiosyncratic product placement mode by drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis and multimodal discourse analysis.     

Multimodal narratives in SIA's “Singapore Girl” TV advertisements – from branding with femininity to branding with provenance and authenticity?

This paper analyses the multimodal narratives in Singapore Airlines (SIA)’s TV advertisements. Adapting the concept of the foreground–background continuum in multimodal interaction analysis, the first section of this paper analyses the narratives in 10 TV commercials available online from 1970s to 2013. Following the comparative analysis, a close investigation from a social semiotic perspective is conducted on SIA's latest TV advertisement in 2013. Through the analysis, this study shows how gendered representations of the Singapore Girl are manipulated in SIA's advertisements. It also reveals how these gendered representations adopted by SIA are married with contemporary branding philosophies, which also work to cloak them in relation to the use of increasingly well-rounded narrative structure. This study hopes to shed light on the understanding of how gender and sexist ideologies and representations are discursively embodied in contemporary branding strategies used by large-scale advertisements and campaigns spanning a long period.     

A multimodal discourse analysis of international postgraduate business students’ finance texts: an investigation of theme and information value

Thematic progression patterning and the composition of information value facilitate the development of well-structured messages. The text-based research of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) into textual features has been confined to language learning and workplace contexts. Empirical research studies involving finance have investigated students’ performance in finance courses and the effects of class attendance on their performance. However, no published studies have yet explored or analysed the textual features of tertiary finance texts. This study investigated the Theme and information value in 6 group assignments in finance, written by 19 Master's students in accounting. Underpinned by Halliday's SFL and Kress and van Leeuwen's system of the composition of information value, this study employed a systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis (SF-MDA) of the texts. The SF-MDA revealed a high frequency of Theme reiteration patterns, the rare occurrence of a linear Theme pattern, and the minimal use of a multiple-Theme pattern. These findings have both theoretical and pedagogical implications for the teaching and learning of writing, particularly in the context of teaching English for business purposes.