Semantic macro-structures and macro-rules in visual discourse processing

Abstract

Semantic macrostructures, although strangely ignored or ruled outside most formal linguistics and even some methods of discourse analysis, define the general, overall meanings of discourse, informally called ‘topic,’ ‘theme,’ ‘gist,’ or ‘upshot’ and on the basis of the higher levels of the mental models of the social actors. Macro-structural (topical, crucial) information, according to Teun van Dijk, plays a fundamental role in discourse comprehension and recall― although other factors (such as remarkableness, vividness, etc.) may also affect attention, prominent representation, and hence recall. One can summarise a sequence of pictures by a title, like a summary of a movie. Similarly, a trailer serves to summarise the movie and to indicate what makes it different from other movies on the cinema circuit. But can we summarise a sequence of images by another (‘macro’) image or image-topic? This article discusses semantic macro-structures and processes of multimodal discourse comprehension, formulating the mapping rules underlying the global interpretation of political cartoons. The rules for multimodal discourse processing (involving group-specific knowledge) formulated in this study apply to Arabic-speaking audiences, which should be of interest for scholars in intercultural communication and cognition.