Correction sequences and semiotic resources in ensemble music workshops: the case of Conduction®

The paper examines the phenomenon of correction of musical action by analysing ensemble music workshops devoted to Conduction®, a way of making music together on the basis of a codified gestural lexicon addressed by a conductor to instrumentalists. In particular, it focuses on correction sequences initiated by the conductor and related to the musical material to be played and discusses the techniques used by the conductor to construct and sequentially organize correction, showing how these are accomplished through the interplay and mutual contextualization of talk and further audible and visible semiotic resources. Based on the fine-grained analysis of two correction sequences, the study stresses the role of multimodality for investigating music and pedagogy from an interactional perspective, while highlighting the peculiarities of Conduction as performative and educational practice.     

Habermas and the Holy Grail of reason: The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity between theatre and theory

A critical discourse analysis of The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity demonstrates that Habermas's discourse on modernity is theoretische Fiktion (a term Freud used to describe a given theory for which no evidence can be found and no arguments validated). Theatrical narrative strategies from drama are identified that not only organise the logic of the text, but also position readers. The choice of mise en scene—the Oedipal cross‐roads where older and younger protagonists meet in conflict—is seen to position readers as mere spectators. The choice of the narrative trope of the romance of lost opportunity (the road open but not taken) is not merely illustrative, but necessary for the claim that Habermas has redeemed the enlightenment project.

The paper critiques Habermas's theorising on discourse ethics because it distinguishes categories of discourse into scientific/analytical, moral/interpretive and aesthetic/expressive, which operate in three different spheres of value. In particular, it challenges the notion of an “inner logics” for what, in Habermas's stable of discourses, he labels the scientific/analytical. Readers of The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, the paper demonstrates, are not so much pulled along by the force of the better argument, but seduced by that unbridled beast: the aesthetic/expressive.     

A discourse–design approach to multimodality: the visual communication of neoliberal management discourse

This paper takes a discourse–design approach to communication, providing a framework as to how this should be done. Design here is how individuals and institutions realize their interests in the world. We show how it is fruitful to link design more closely to the way discourse has been used in critical studies which draws attention to the motivated use of design, for thinking about design in terms of socio-political context. Due to their affordances, semiotic modes such as photography, graphics, layout, colour, numbers and writing will be deployed and co-articulated. The aim, using a discourse–design approach, is to show how we can best identify the very different affordances of such modes and how they rely on the principled design of a discourse. We illustrate this using examples from management documents at a university which draw on these different affordances in different ways to communicate the same discourse. Through this analysis we see how a neoliberal discourse based on a general design principle of coordination enters everyday practices and become very difficult to challenge.     

“They might read a fly speck”: musical literacy as a discursive resource in Louis Armstrong's autobiographies

Jazz has been described as a music in which the “oral” element plays a crucial role, in opposition to Western “classical” music, seen as a chiefly “written” tradition. Although such an image is frequently advocated by critics and musicians themselves, it is also true that it can generate ambivalence and negative outputs, such as the persistent myth of “primitivism” and “naivety,” often associated with jazz music. Building on Social Semiotics and Critical Discourse Analysis, this study aims at analyzing how the representations of “orality” and “literacy,” that emerge in some autobiographical narratives by Louis Armstrong, are generated, and how they can work as semiotic and discursive resources. It argues that the different depictions of musicians, and the attitude displayed toward musical literacy, are sensitive to the historical, societal, and political context in which texts have been produced and published, as well as to the narrator's willingness and ability to resist or subvert dominant discourses. Moreover, the characterization of a musician (or a category of musicians) as able or unable to access musical literacy can also serve local purposes, such as expressing the narrator's stance toward narrative characters.     

Linguistic and visual strategies for portraying immigrants as people deprived of human rights†

The majority of news items on sub-Saharan immigrants in the Spanish press refer to their arrival by jumping the fences of Ceuta or Melilla or landing in small boats at the Spanish coast. The data in this article consist of all the news items published on the arrival of sub-Saharan immigrants in Spain by jumping the fences of Ceuta and Melilla, items that appeared in the digital editions of the two most popular Spanish newspapers, El País and ABC, from 1 January 2012 to 1 January 2015. The principles of critical discourse analysis and visual grammar are used to deconstruct the linguistic and visual portrayal of sub-Saharan immigrants when they try to enter Spain by jumping the fence. This research reveals that the immigrants jumping the fence at Melilla are represented as wild and dangerous. There is no reference to their human rights. The study thus aims to provide a visual analysis of the way in which the arrival of these immigrants is represented visually in two serious newspapers. In this way, the study aims to unveil visual ways of negative representation of immigrants, who are portrayed as dangerous invaders.     

“If it doesn't make sense it's not true”: how Judge Judy creates coherent stories through “common-sense” reasoning according to the neoliberal agenda

This study examines the American court show Judge Judy. Drawing on both conversation analysis and critical discourse analysis, this paper aims to show how ideological assumptions about how to be a “good citizen” manifest themselves at a turn-by-turn level in the interactions on Judge Judy and how they contribute to the co-construction of a new version of events. The microanalyses reveal how Sheindlin's strategic use of “common-sense reasoning” sets up a context and characterization of the opposing litigants. Sheindlin reframes complex issues as simple black-and-white stories. These new stories have a plain narrative line without the contingencies of everyday life and with clearly moral and immoral characters allowing her to pass a judgment that only seems fair.     

“Our biggest killer”: multimodal discourse representations of dementia in the British press

A recent (2016) Office for National Statistics report stated that dementia is now “the leading cause of death” in England and Wales. Ever fixated with the syndrome (an unfailingly newsworthy topic), the British press was quick to respond to the bulletin, consistently headlining that dementia was the nation’s “biggest killer,” while (re)formulating other aspects of the report in distorting and emotive metaphorical terms. In this paper we examine how the media, through use of a recurring set of linguistic and visual semiotic tropes, portrayed dementia as an agentive entity, a “killer,” which remorselessly attacks its “victims.” Such a broadly loaded and sensationalist representation, we argue, not only construed dementia as a direful and pernicious disease, but also, crucially, obscured the personal and social contexts in which the syndrome is understood and experienced (not least by people with dementia themselves). This intensely lurid type of representation not only fails to address the ageist misinformation and common misunderstandings that all too commonly surround dementia, but is also likely to exacerbate the stress and depression frequently experienced by people with dementia and their families.