Interdependence,interaction and metaphor in multisemiotic texts

Systemic frameworks for discourse analysis of visual/verbal and mathematics texts are used to examine the functionality of language? visual display and mathematical symbolism, and the meaning arising from interaction and interdependence between these semiotic codes in joint constructions. The nature of the interaction between options, classified as unmarked or marked, determines the meaning made in that instance and, more generally, provides an impetus for the expansion of the meaning potential of each semiotic. The phenomenon where semantic shifts occur when functional elements are reconstrued in another semiotic is called semiotic metaphor. Rather than the notion of an overlay of meaning typically associated with grammatical metaphor, the potential exists here for more dramatic forms of semantic shift. Examples of semiotic metaphor categorised as ‘parallel semiotic metaphor’ and ‘divergent semiotic metaphor’ are given in the text analysis.     

Are Authors Authored? Cultural Politics and Literary Agency in the Era of the Internet

I argue that we need to view texts and all cultural products and practices as having been authored but simultaneously as constrained by the culture industry and its literary political economies. This theoretical apperception affords a social theory of the text that combines insights from German critical theory and French postmodern theory. Viewing the inherence of reading and writing in the social allows us to conceive of strategies that liberate authors and all cultural producers from domination while keeping in mind that language will always be a prison house of sorts, captured in Derrida's notion of undecidability. Developing a social theory of the text is especially important in the era of the internet and Web, when cultural production and transmission are opened up to many writers and readers.     

The Fundamentalist City,Medieval Modernity,and the Arab Spring

Abstract

The Arab World has witnessed massive popular uprisings that seek to overturn years of authoritarianism and supposedly bring about democratic change and social justice. These uprisings evoke both optimism and pessimism about religion, violence, and their connection to cities. As people in various parts of the Arab world embark on their quest for self-government, there is no telling where this great experiment will lead. Based on current indications, religion will play a decisive role in shaping the futures of these nations, and particularly their cities. These directions seem to be charted by the religious parties that have come to power, and through a series of subtle and gradual policies that are setting the foundations for future theocratic states. The aim of this article is to explore the urban processes by which religious ideologies transform into fundamentalist urban movements, and how their actions are starting to reshape the cities of the Arab World.     

马克思主义中国化中的文本阅读问题

文本阅读是马克思主义中国化的基础,但阅读理解马克思恩格斯的文本要受到文本本身以及阅读者自身各种复杂因素的制约。就文本而言,马克思恩格斯没有对自己的思想做过专门的系统阐述,许多论述是在某些具体环境中针对具体条件做出的,其理论价值和实践意义与这些条件密切相关;就阅读者而言,他的个性、知识背景,特别是他所在社会的发展状况,决定了他对马克思恩格斯文本的选择与理解。这两方面的情况使得任何人对马克思主义的理解都有相对性,都不可能与所涉及的马克思恩格斯论述的本意完全一致。这要求在马克思主义中国化中,每个人都要有谦虚的开放的心态,相互尊重,切忌"唯我独马";同时,究竟谁的理解正确,往往只有通过实践检验才能做出结论。     

Deixis and space in drama

This article seeks to explore some of the functions of deixis in the delineation of space in drama. The dramatic text addresses a context of performance and, therefore, space depiction is generally regarded as within the province of theatre since the transformation of the hare boards of the stage into other spaces and places calls forth the skills of scenographers, lighting experts, etc. Verbal depictions of space are seen to be best employed in referring to off‐stage space or restricted to reference to objects onstage, when they need to be particularly foregrounded as significant for the onstage action in its relation to the whole. The, basically, onstage/off‐stage division is mapped on to the visual/verbal one so that the visual, onstage space is the main business with verbal references to offstage space backgrounded as a consequence. Deictic phenomena, however, cut across such divisions. Deixis uses the body of participants in speech events as the primary point for calculations of space. The body has access to different channels—visual, auditory, tactile, etc. which deictic usages mobilise. Moreover, from a linguist's point of view, the mode of discourse appropriate to drama is speech since the dialogue presupposes actors on stage interacting with each other, via speech, and not reading texts silently. The voice is the medium of communication, and hence, the body is installed back into the page of the text. Deixis presupposes a corporeal context of utterance with corporeal bodies and channels of communication open for use. This article explores some of the consequences for delineating dramatic space, when the visual/verbal division and its progeny are undercut by the use of deixis.     

Problems and opportunities in Polanyian analysis today

Abstract

The three books under review in this article all demonstrate the beginnings of a shift in the tone of literature on or derived from the work of Karl Polanyi. On one hand, the authors all show a willingness to admit a variety of problems and weaknesses in his work. But on the other hand, it is precisely this degree of critical introspection that enables the authors under review to identify some of the most important and contemporarily relevant aspects of Polanyi's thought. In the two main sections of this article – on Polanyi's concepts of ‘embeddedness’ and ‘double movement’ – I define the problems highlighted in previous iterations of Polanyian literature, moving on to examine how the texts under review address those problems, laying particular emphasis on the ideational components of Polanyi's thought. I conclude by suggesting future directions for Polanyian scholarship, mooting the possibility of a distinctively ‘post-Polanyian’ perspective in which ideas, discourse and framing are placed centre stage.     

Examining Strategic Narratives in Chinese Official Discourse under Xi Jinping

Research suggests that over the last two decades China has undergone dramatic changes in its communication climate. The former mono-glossic environment has made way for a plurality of voices, now debating (non-sensitive) political, social and economic issues on online fora. While this has contributed to a more consultative state-society relationship, the leadership still wields the conductor’s baton over the ensemble of voices to ensure adherence to the main melody. The uneasy coexistence of transformation and conservatism is especially salient when it comes to propaganda and soft power, which the Chinese authorities fully deploy to disseminate their vision of the ‘China story’ abroad and to legitimize continued CCP rule at home. This paper examines the various strategic narratives that cumulatively constitute this ‘China story’, designed for the international as well as domestic audiences. It looks into divergences/convergences with the political discourse of previous generations of leadership by examining argumentation patterns and discursive strategies used in speeches and texts produced by top-level officials and their ‘core’ leader, Xi Jinping. While, on the surface, new slogans, such as ‘the Chinese dream’, the ‘New Normal’, the ‘Four Comprehensives’, the ‘Community of Common Destiny’ appear to be Xi Jinping’s hallmark, and cumulatively contribute to the all-encompassing official doctrine of ‘Xi Jinping Thought’, no paradigmatic ideological change emerges from the narratives. Yet, the strategies utilised to spread ‘the China story’ are more diverse, the conductor’s baton is held more tightly, the main melody is chanted more loudly and the echoes are carried further abroad over the mountains and seas via the new Silk Road initiatives to present an alternative world order of ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’.

     

From permanent employment to massive lay-offs: the political economy of ‘transitional unemployment’ in urban China (1993–8)

Abstract

The idea that economic activities may be described and studied as ‘embedded’ in social relations has been central to much debate in recent economic sociology. The present paper analyses legal struggles over the status of begging in US law and argues that conflicting rhetorical accounts of begging illustrate social actors’ efforts to articulate the interconnectedness of their social world, including the ways in which economic practices are embedded in their social and institutional contexts. The paper thus suggests that embeddedness is not just something identified by social researchers, but also a problem faced by social actors as they try to understand the socio-economic order in which they live and act. By arguing for or against the claim that begging is simultaneously an economic action and the exercise of the right to freedom of expression, the voices in this debate attempted to affect the future of this marginal economic activity.     

马克思主义哲学研究对象的解释学探讨

马克思主义哲学研完对象就是马克思主义哲学文本著作,对它既要作认识论研究,又要作解释学研究,解释学研究包括两个方面:其一,研究马克思主义哲学文本的"量"和"质",量是指马克思主义哲学文本的范围,质是指此范围内的文本是绝对具有还是相对具有"马克思主义哲学"性质,马克思主义哲学教科书、恩格斯等经典作家的著作、马克思本人的全部著作不能绝对地、确定无疑地认定为马克思主义哲学著作.其二,研究马克思主义哲学文本的本质--意义,这个意义是体现在文本中的马克思的哲学思想,它是马克思赋予的,而非读者赋予的,它是固定不变的,并可以被认识.     

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.     

When the Elders of Zion relocated to Eurabia: conspiratorial racialization in antisemitism and Islamophobia

Zia-Ebrahimi’s objective in this article is two-fold. First, to argue that antisemitism and Islamophobia display similar dynamics in representing their target population as a separate and antagonistic race (a process referred to as ‘racialization’). Second, to suggest that conspiracy theories of the ‘world Jewish domination’ type or their Islamophobic equivalent ‘Islamization of Europe’ type are powerful enablers of racialization, something that the race literature has so far neglected. In pursuing these two interrelated objectives, he offers a textual comparison of two conspiracy theories featuring Jews and Muslims. The first is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1903), the notorious forgery claiming to be the minutes of a meeting of Jewish leaders planning to take over Europe and the world. This text is largely considered to be at the very heart of modern-day antisemitism and an essential ingredient of the ideational context of the Holocaust. The second is Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (2005), a pamphlet by polemicist Bat Ye’or claiming to have uncovered another ominous conspiracy, that of Muslims plotting to turn Europe into Eurabia, a dystopic land in which jihad and sharia rule, and non-Muslims live in a state of subjection. Zia-Ebrahimi argues that, despite some differences in format, the two texts display strikingly similar discursive dynamics in their attempt to racialize Jews and Muslims as the ultimate Other determined to destroy Us. This process is referred to as ‘conspiratorial racialization’.     

From book to stage to screen: semiotic transformations of Gothic horror genre conventions

ABSTRACT

This paper adopts a multimodal social semiotic approach for exploring the semiotic changes involved in the transformation of a novel into stage and screen productions. It examines how semiotic resources are deployed in each medium through elements of mise-en-scène, such as speech, music, sound, lighting, props, staging, and cinematographic techniques, and the viewing perspectives that are thus established for audiences. The genre of Gothic horror is selected for this purpose, given how this form of performance has transfixed audiences for centuries and has been adapted for both the stage and the screen. In order to demonstrate how each performance medium has produced its own unique set of foregrounding devices to enthral and captivate audiences, a comparative analysis of excerpts from the novel The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, a videotaped theatrical performance, and the 1989 British television film of the same name is undertaken. The paper discusses the implications of the multimodal semiotic approach for developing a better understanding of the semiotic transformations that horror genre conventions undergo in different media and the viewership positions that are thus re-drawn for audiences. The paper concludes with a view of multimodal recontextualisation processes which form the underlying basis of human sociocultural life.     

“Imagine you are auditioning for the Viennese opera”: masterclasses and the assessment of operatic habitus

Being neither one-to-one classes nor concerts, masterclasses for opera singers are considered locales that provide young singers with an opportunity to perform for a highly esteemed figure in the hopes that the master’s feedback will improve their future performances. However, masterclasses can also be looked at as social texts that read through the means of assessing young trainees on the basis of their potential acceptance into the international culture of opera. Intertwining a linguistic perspective as suggested by de Saussere, which distinguishes between “language” and “speech,” with a Bourdieuian perspective that focuses on habitus and cultural capital enables looking at master classes as arenas for assessing young professionals’ operatic habitus and pointing to the components which constitute cultural capital either cumulative or innate. As such, masterclasses become institutions that reinforce Western supremacy of the operatic world and limit the access of individuals of non-European origin.     

“Un nodo avviluppato”. Rossini’s La Cenerentola as a prototype of multimodal resemiotisation

ABSTRACT

Since its early beginnings in Italy in the sixteenth century, opera has always been a multimodal text, integrating verbal, musical, and stage resources. Verbal resources can be unpacked in lyric verse for vocal pieces in closed form, narrative verse or prose for recitative, and stage directions; musical resources include instrumental and vocal music, whereas stage resources incorporate stage design, singers’ and dancers’ kinesics, and set and costume arrangements. However, opera has been rarely studied in multimodal terms, as it has been mainly explored from musicological standpoints, hence prioritising music and barely taking into account the interplay of other resources. As a case study, epitomising the Golden Age of opera, La Cenerentola by Rossini has been selected, as it exemplifies how the theatrical and compositional conventions of the genre work concurrently with its metatextual components. Stage adaptations will be also analysed in two film operas, that is, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s La Cenerentola (Germany, 1981) and Carlo Verdone’s Cenerentola, Una favola in diretta (Italy, 2014). Opera will be interpreted as a prototype of multi-level resemiotisation, also in a critical light, as the libretto is resemiotised (1) as a musical composition; (2) as a mise-en-scène, and (3) as a film opera.     

Reading aloud as performance and its representation on television programmes for children

ABSTRACT

The social practice of reading aloud picture books to children, or shared reading, has been represented on many televisions programmes broadcast across English-speaking countries. This article views shared reading as a performance, and explores its transformation on two television shows for children and the potential of such shows to promote reading engagement and literacy development. Taking a critical multimodal perspective, we analyse shared reading in real life and on television as a social practice, focusing on the ways the participants talk about the picture book, relate it to exterior texts or activities, and legitimise shared reading through the employment of multimodal and interactive strategies. The analysis reveals significant differences between actual adult–child shared reading and its representation on television. The comparison illustrates the potential benefits and limitations of television shows in which picture books are read to the viewer, in terms of promoting shared reading among families and supporting young children’s emergent literacy development.     

Seeing White−Female Whiteness and the Purity of Children in Australian,Chinese and British Visual Culture

In this paper, I interrogate the expression and usage of ‘whiteness’ in Australian, British and Chinese visual culture. My approach is through reading local texts with an eye to transcultural systems of meaning, paying particular attention to the ways in which whiteness is used as a doubled category in sexual politics. The paper is formed through the performance of cross-cultural connectivities within an epistemological emphasis on the travelled theorist. The movement between Chinese, Australian and English ethical positions are constitutive of the perspectives expressed here; the perspectives are themselves concerned to look back and into those ethical positions. The performance works towards a recognition of the semiotic systems of power and identity, and therefore of the conditions of theoretical performance itself.     

Religion,globalization and commodification in online world news slideshows: the dis/connection of images and texts

Lately, possibilities of producing and spreading news pictures have increased explosively through online media. Concurrently, religion has become increasingly salient in politics and news. Both processes are connected to globalization. This study encompasses globalization, religion and online images and aims to convey how online world news slideshows represent religion, and more particularly how linguistic and visual parts of picture paragraphs are interrelated, as well as related to representations of different religions. Methodologically multimodal analysis and discourse analysis are combined, focusing on composition of images and (dis-)connection of images and texts. Theories on globalization and possibilities and particularities of online news (pictures) and slideshows, frame the analysis. Tendencies to templates for different religions are found. Many religions appear as aesthetic commodities in images, whereas Islam in texts “sells” images of violence/destruction. Image–text relations are thus crucial both in the creation of meaning and of commodities in online news image culture. Two main image–text types are identified: “Religion in text, (potential) violence/destruction/despair in picture” (Islam) and “Spirituality/worshipping/aestheticism” (other religions). The world news slideshows have crucial roles as containers for these polarized image–text types, where they are related to and defined by each other in the genre's (cl)aim to cover the whole world.     

Continuity and change in anti-Jewish prejudice: the transmission of the anti-talmudic texts of Sixtus of Siena

ABSTRACT

One of the main elements common to both the mediaeval anti-Jewish tradition and modern antisemitism is the use of Jewish religious texts—particularly the Talmud—in order to ‘prove’ that Jews pose a threat to non-Jews. Bravo López considers how a series of anti-talmudic texts written by Sixtus of Siena in the sixteenth century were disseminated and used, up to the beginning of the twentieth century, to legitimize a threatening image of Judaism and Jews. Despite the changing historical context, that image remained virtually intact throughout the centuries, allowing these same texts to be used time and time again to ‘prove’ that it was a faithful reflection of reality. Although historical changes can account for differences in the specific motives that drove each author to use the texts of Sixtus of Siena, those authors all shared the same image of Judaism and the Jews, and they considered these texts—cited as an authoritative source, legitimizing their point of view—to be effective in support of their cause.     

Meaning construction in legislative discourse: a sociosemiotic interpretation on supervision system reform in China

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the reform of supervision system in China through the Supervision Law, and identifies this Law as a sign within its corresponding social and political purposes and intentions from the sociosemiotic perspective. Within its legislation process, the Supervision Law could be identified as both a sign textualized among the disciplinary regulations, and as a signifier configured with the successive interpretants by relevant laws, for example, the Constitution Amendment 2018 and the Criminal Procedure Law 2018, showing the social construction of legislative meaning as infinite semiosis. In other words, from the whole process of sign perception, reception, acceptation, and interpretation, a legislative text could be interpreted both as a sign constructed in the external but relevant sign systems and as a signifier reconstructed with the successive but infinite interpretants in the internal sign system. This study also finds that the social construction of meaning is achieved and represented to the extent which is constructed through the representation and interpretation of law-making process by sign receivers or legal participants.     

Understanding complicity: memory,hope and the imagination

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses the thorny issue of complicity with wrongdoing under conditions of systemic political violence, such as authoritarianism, totalitarianism or military occupation. The challenge of dealing with collaborators – those who colluded with the apparatus of repression or who benefitted from its existence – is central to subsequent processes of justice and memory-making. This paper proposes several arguments. Firstly, it claims we need to think about complicity and resistance not dichotomically, but as a continuum of locations individuals can occupy. Secondly, these locations are influenced by the agents’ positionality within the social world, each agent being situated at the intersection of several axes of distinction: class, gender, racialisation, and religion, among others. Thirdly, to understand complicity we also need to draw a connection between individual’s experience of time and their actions: temporality is experienced from within a social position, through the interplay between memory, imagination and hope. Positionality thus affects one’s memories and self-understanding, the scope of one’s imagination, as well as the type and intensity of one’s hopes. Therefore, individuals’ capacity to build on the past to imagine a future, to invest emotionally in the future and act accordingly are interrelated aspects of their experience, which will influence how they navigate the muddy waters of systemic wrongdoing, more or less complicitly. To give concreteness to these three theoretical arguments, the paper discusses several forms of complicity with violence during the Vichy Regime in France.