Intersemiotic Texture: analyzing cohesive devices between language and images

Recent research on multimodal discourse has explored the nature of semantic relations between different semiotic resources. Drawing on the interpretation of language as a social semiotic resource, this article proposes Intersemiotic Texture as the crucial property of coherent multimodal texts and presents a preliminary framework for cohesive devices between language and images. The framework is illustrated through examination of print media to demonstrate how the image–text relations are meta-functionally orchestrated across experiential, textual and logical meanings at the discourse stratum. A discourse-based model is suggested to analyze image–text logical relations complementary to existing grammar-based approaches. This research also develops a meta-language to describe Intersemiotic Cohesive Devices from two complementary perspectives: Intersemiotic Cohesion not only functions to integrate different modes together when multimodal discourse is conceptualized as a finished product, it also constitutes essential text-forming resources for semantic expansions across language and images during the ongoing contextualization of meanings in real time.     

From Being a Problem to Having Problems: Discourse,Governmentality and Chinese Migrant Workers

This article analyzes the political effects of the new discourse on Chinese migrant workers that emerged in the 2000s, and how this discourse is contested by an alternative discourse. The article demonstrates how the new discourse has facilitated socialist-liberal governance by transforming migrant workers into self-governing individuals. Moreover, the article argues that socialist-liberal governmentality is based on a post-political understanding that promotes a society without structural differences and reformulates social problems as individual deficiencies. Based on a discourse analysis of Chinese newspaper coverage, the article analyzes how this post-political myth is contested by an alternative understanding of society that repoliticizes migrant workers and their problems. In conclusion, the analysis points to how media discourses can contest governmental projects.     

Legitimising male grooming through packaging discourse: a linguistic analysis

While packaging is a common marketing subject, this illustration paper provides an alternative perspective through the linguistic examination of packaging as discourse, focusing on male grooming, masculinity and metrosexuality. Male grooming is often perceived as trespassing into feminine space and creating ambiguity in gender borders. This study aims to explore how packaging designers negotiate masculinity, in order to persuade men to accept grooming products through social interactions within the packaging of L'Oréal Men Expert. Employing Scollon's mediated discourse analysis and incorporating the Barthesian order of signification, the study analyses how different social actions within the packaging discourse are mediated by multimodal features. The findings reveal five negotiating strategies, i.e. constructing a hegemonic masculine image; negotiating (a masculinised) metrosexuality; empowering men; giving men a logical reason to groom; and a different portrayal of skincare products. The key aim of this paper is to illustrate the differences between marketing and linguistics and propose possible collaboration.     

Social media as semiotic technology and social practice: the case of ResearchGate’s design and its potential to transform social practice

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the need for critical approaches to social media by bridging the focus on language and other semiotic resources that characterises discourse studies with the broader perspective on social media as social, cultural, economic and technological constructs that dominates media and cultural studies. Specifically, we propose a model for analysing how social media as semiotic technologies, that is, technologies designed to enable and constrain meaning-making, may transform social practices. By incorporating Van Leeuwen’s [2008. Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Analysis. London: Oxford University Press] framework for the critical analysis of discourse and social practice, the model extends the social semiotic approach developed in recent critical multimodal studies of software such as PowerPoint to social media, which function primarily to provide platforms for and commodify social practices, rather than to offer rich arrays of semiotic resources for creating multimodal texts and artefacts. Using the academic social network site ResearchGate and the practice of research peer review, we illustrate the model’s capacity to account for the ways the design of social media platforms – through the semiotic resources they make available and the ways these are presented – enables and constrains their users’ ability to perform key social practices and has the potential to transform these practices.     

Deconstructing competing courtroom narratives: representation of social actors

Underpinned by the assumption that the import of the facts and the law in the courtroom depends on how they are invoked and (re)presented mainly through language use by courtroom interactants, this functional linguistic study critically scrutinizes representation strategies that opposing lawyers use to position social actors in their narratives, integrating Halliday’s concept of transitivity and van Leeuwen’s inventory of social actor representation. The findings reveal that the two sides consistently exhibit contrasting discursive practices, and that referential choices and grammatical positioning constitute major semiotic resources that work in concert to construct different identities and alternate realities, and negotiate interpretations of the guilt and innocence of the defendant and the victims. Social actor representation, it is argued, constitutes an important contingency bearing on the outcome of this institutional discourse. Such resources are deeply intertwined with each presenter’s underlying ideologies in this institutional discourse.     

How to construct your sexuality according to French magazines

Gendered magazines are a major contemporary form of mediation, (re)production and organization of (hetero)sexuality. They illustrate how sexual activity and performance become the concern and responsibility of individuals who are able to invest time and resources in the construction of a sexually-skilled self. Drawing on contemporary research, the article seeks to promote a dialogue between media and communications research, analysing French media narratives on sexuality through the reading of a selection of articles from the best-selling summer magazines aimed at 18- to 25-year-old readers. The article uses a semiodiscursive analysis to understand how didactic models are made to (re)produce specific knowledge on sexuality and to ascertain that this knowledge is coded in an expertise discourse. Through the hypothesis of a didactic ambition, three didactic models are identified, and attention is here focused on the short-coming/reparative model, that simultaneously creates a dysfunction and a fix. The analysis eventually reveals that didactic models are made to organize social life by strictly dividing sexual and therefore social roles between “men” and “women”. The moral criteria called upon regulate the ideal treatment of those didactic modalities and the discourse in magazines ends up shaping sexuality as a contemporary moral economy, a problem that should be pragmatically treated through the use of a certain type of knowledge.     

哈贝马斯言语行为三重功能模式理论

哈贝马斯的社会批判理论通过言语行为的机制协调功能约束主体间的行为,从而实现从话语结构角度解释社会的目的,进而回答了社会秩序何以可能的经典之问。研究哈贝马斯言语行为三重功能模式理论,必须要思考三个问题:第一,是什么的问题,即哈贝马斯所主张的三重功能模式理论的具体内容是什么;第二,为什么是的问题,即为什么是言语行为使主体间达成共识,而不是权力、货币或其他相关媒介;第三,如何是的问题,即言语行为如何使主体间达成共识。     

Using Fact Checking to Improve Information Systems in Argentina

Chequeado is an NGO that was the first fact-checking initiative in Latin America. It began its work in 2010 and aims to improve the quality of public discourse and to raise the cost of lying and spreading misinformation, with a main focus on Argentina. It also leads the Latam Chequea network in the region. The organisation produces regular fact checking articles and explainers, partners with key actors to stop the spread of misinformation on social media, develops state of the art applications and software, and teaches media literacy and data journalism, among other activities. This article outlines anecdotal evidence for the impact of this work, which it is seeking to build on with more research to measure its impact and understand how fact checking can be more effective.     

乡村社会研究的难题与话语群的观察对策

话语群理论是在传统的乡村研究理论遇到一系列难题之后应运而生的,是对我国乡村研究中的长期模式,即关于乡村社会"传统—现代"的二元分割结构认知模式的突破,也是基于西方语言学方法遇到自身困惑,即语境建构出现泛滥趋势的基础之上提出来的。     

Labour Party: saved by the modernisers or modernised to be saved?

The paper treats politics as a complex process that embraces actual or potential interactions among constructed meanings of different social actors through various symbolic forms drawing on the specific socio‐historical, political context. These symbolic forms can take the form of various kinds from everyday linguistic utterances to complex images and texts. It is suggested that there is a strong interrelationship between ‘image’ and political discourse and their symbolic value grows as long as they come from consistent communication among all the social actors participating in the political process inside and outside of the political organisation. Two historical examples from the British political landscape—the Labour election defeat in 1987 and the Labour leadership election in 1994—are examined so as to draw some useful remarks concerning the limitations in drawing the line between ‘image’ and political discourse and among processes considered either internal or external of the party. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

“Lucy says today she is a Labordoodle”: how the dogs-of-Instagram reveal voter preferences

Instagram is an image-centric social media application, launched in October 2010 with the explicit aim of allowing members to share their smart phone photos with the world. Posts typically combine photographs with a short verbal text, and as such provide fertile ground for multisemiotic analysis. Further, at times of political significance or upheaval, Instagram, like other social media platforms, provides a space for the public to express opinions or emotions. The fact that citizens do this through a combination of words and images on Instagram is the subject of analysis in this article. Using a dataset of 92 Instagram posts that made use of the discourse tagging hashtag #dogsatpollingstations at the time of the 2016 Australian federal election, this study demonstrates the multisemiotic strategies used by members of the public to show their dissatisfaction with the incumbent government, and their endorsement of other political parties. The study also demonstrates the triangulation of multiple methods, and as such is an example of corpus-assisted multimodal discourse analysis.     

Constructing a decolonized world city for consumption: discourses on Hong Kong Disneyland and their implications

The paper argues that, under the globalized economy, state power is far from diminishing. I study how the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government officials in 1999 developed “competition-development” discourse and “disappearing-world-city” discourse to persuade the public to approve the unequal and non-transparent Hong Kong–Disney deal for setting up the Hong Kong Disneyland (HKDL). I also examine how newspaper reports have circulated and have reinforced these two pairs of political discourses in wider popular discourse. I further reveal, in the post-colonial context of HongKong, how the HKDL project functions to accomplish decolonization tasks and to reshape Hong Kong as a consumption-based tourist spot instead of a citizen-based participatory community.     

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.     

The chameleon of mens rea and the shifting guises of culture-specific genocidal intent in international criminal proceedings

This article examines the significance of the mens rea-related evidence present in the specific language and discourse identified in the records of the International Military Tribunal, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The author argues that international proceedings have seen the emergence of a new type of evidence: a cognitive, linguistic, culturally determined plural of genocidal mens rea. As a result, the mental element of genocidal intent can neither be interpreted nor understood without an advanced forensic approach to the language used by the network of génocidaires. Based on a combination of cognitive and social science research with the humanities, the article applies a hybrid method of analysis to some of the genocide cases in international criminal justice and demonstrates how and why this approach ought to be introduced into the process of identification of the guilty minds of the architects of genocide.     

Reinventing political subjectivities: studying critical documentaries on the war on terror

This paper casts a look on media aspects of the anti-war-on-terror struggle in western countries. A peculiar warfare, the “war on terror” that officially begun in 2001, is a low-density global warfare, fought in different internal and external fronts . Within a liberal, increasingly post-political social terrain, where social affairs are objects of expert management lacking public accountability and legitimacy, the role, status and the identity of the contemporary citizen is in decline. New media “affordances” offer critical possibilities for challenging hegemonic political discourses, and addressing political alternatives for a broad range of social problems; a re-invention of citizenship through the construct of a new (collective) political subject is central in the reinvention of democracy today. Discourse analysis, drawing reflexively on post-structuralist discourse theory and critical discourse analysis, is deployed in the study of counter-war-on-terror discourses in different documentaries critical to the “war on terror”. Analysis looks at different constructions of “us” and “them” in the context of counter-hegemonic discourses today. Identity is central in the engagement, participation and orientation of citizens today. Identity is central in organising a collective centre and in initiating subjectivity to fragmented liberal, postmodern individuals.     

意识形态安全视域下社会思潮的新发展态势及其批判

在新中国70多年的社会发展变革中,多样化社会思潮不断涌现,并与马克思主义意识形态产生了激烈的论争,呈现出新的发展态势:在理论演进上,从注重抽象的学术争辩转向注重现实政治诉求;在现实关切上,从宏观的社会发展道路转向微观的利益分配;在国际交互态势上,从国外思潮不断向国内思潮转化;在话语辐散上,从知识分子话语扩展到大众话语;在传播方式上,从传统媒体时代的单向度传播转向全媒体时代的多向度传播。新时代马克思主义意识形态建设要科学把握社会思潮新的发展态势,切实增强马克思主义意识形态对当代中国多样化社会思潮的凝聚力与引领力,从而保障国家意识形态安全,提升国家治理效能。     

Timespacing competence: multilingual children's linguistic worlds

Drawing on Kramsch's conceptualization of the multilingual subject and the symbolic self, in this paper, we explore how multilingual children re-signify three intertwined myths about the bilingual student, linguistic diversity and language competence, when, in the researcher-generated activity My linguistic world 2014, they are invited to map and talk about their lived experiences as multiple language users seen in the light of place and movement. By demythifying themselves and their linguistic worlds, the children also raise important questions about the notion of linguistic competence. By perceiving competences from a subjective child perspective, we learn how children do what we call timespacing competence. On that basis, we suggest paying attention to how children themselves timespace competence by focusing (more consistently) on the subjective, social, spatial and temporal dimensions of (knowing) language.     

Human Rights Discourse in Domestic Settings: How Does it Emerge?

Building on the literature that analyzes the impact of norms and ideas on international and domestic politics, it is our assumption that the widespread introduction and dissemination of a human rights discourse enables oppressed groups to translate events into rights language and to appeal to courts, politicians and media in order to seek remedies for their grievances. In so far as human rights discourse actually helps introduce more ethical policies and legislation, it is crucial to understand how this discourse, which in the past 55 years evolved and proliferated on the global level, emerges and develops in domestic settings. Using Israel as a case study, and more specifically analyzing the Israeli press, we further develop some of the existing theoretical claims about how the global and local interact. We argue that in order to understand how the rights discourse is imported into the domestic arena and how it expands once it enters the local scene, it is crucial to employ a broader conception of the global and a more differentiated view of the local. We emphasize the significance of local events and practices in determining the impact of the global on national settings, suggesting that one cannot understand transnational flows without unveiling the black box of the domestic arena.     

Enhancing public participation through narrative analysis

Effective public participation requires methods of policy analysis that can accommodate the discourse of the participants' opinions, preferences and values. This requires analytic methods that retain and convey the social and cultural contexts of the discourse of culturally diverse communities. Narrative policy analysis can incorporate cultural and social diversity within the process of analysing and presenting public preferences. Labov's evaluation model is used as a basis for describing how narrative analysis can be used to identify and present public preferences within a participation process. The value of this approach is demonstrated with reference to a participation process conducted on environmental quality.