Audiovisual Discourse Research Articles

In Custody: From written text to audio-visual discourse through a postcolonial lens

Comparing the novel In Custody, written by , and the film adaptation In Custody (1993), directed by Ismail Merchant, provides an interesting opportunity to examine how literary texts are transformed into audio-visual works, through different discursive techniques. A written text is taken from the page to live on a screen, and thus focusing on the main content the literary author created becomes a challenge for screenwriters, filmmakers and translators. In the case of In Custody, the inclusion of English subtitles in the film allows for its internationalization while respecting the language of the novel. This approach enables audiences to appreciate the sounds of Hindi and Urdu poetry, and in doing so, they become custodians of these rich literary traditions.

Film discourse: the semantic interpretation of film titles

This article discusses the problems of semantic interpretation of the titles of feature films, as films turned into influential means of mass communication in the modern life. Filmonyms as one of the types of small-format texts has become the object of linguistic research. The significance of the film discourse as an audiovisual discourse is determined by the possibilities of its impact on the addressee. Author comprehensively analyzed the works of foreign and Kazakhstani linguists who studied the film discourse from various aspects. The purpose of the article is to identify linguistic and pragmalinguistic interpretation of Kazakhstani film titles. To achieve the goal, the following tasks were set: to consider semantic interpretation of the titles of feature films, to identify aesthetic function of film discourse, to group films into semantic categories, to offer the definition of the concept of “film discourse”. The scientific significance of the research work expands the research scope of film-discourse as a type of institutional discourse. Practical significance is due to the fact that research results can be used as materials for preparing lectures and cases on audiovisual discourse and pragmalinguistic features applied to the names of Kazakhstani films should undoubtedly become the object of further research by linguists.

On the issue of the relationship of verbal and non-verbal components in the interpretation of audiovisual discourse

The process of interpretation is to a large extent defined by the scientific perception of an audiovisual production as an act of intracultural and intercultural communication between the collective author and the target audience. Audiovisual productions are multilayered complexes of verbal and non-verbal elements that are interrelated by the collective author in the process of their creation. The structure of these relations must be perceived, understood and interpreted correctly by the target audience. Without this the process of cultural communication by the means of these audiovisual works between these two aggregated entities is impossible. The process of interpretation has many levels that are defined by cognitive and cultural attributes of viewers. Its stages are - perception of its components by visual and sound receptors; - understanding of the meaning of minimal units of both visual and aural verbal and non-verbal streams; - culturally determined interpreting of plot units in the process of double reconstruction of the coherent AV discourse whole based both on its explicit and implicit components; - secondary semantization of content. This article differentiates between the concept of a single viewer-recipient as a subject of perception process and the collective viewer as a participant of an act of the social communication based on the transmission of AV discourses. The collective viewer is a complex subject of the social interpretation of AV discourses who establishes norms and rules of this process and performs acts of their secondary semantization. Eventfulness is the key cognitive parameter of audiovisual productions, The collective author uses visual, ambience, verbal tools in the process of the cultural communication to create for the target audience various event sequences forming the backbone of a plot that can by understood by the audience.

Can't read my broker face?—Tracing a motif and metaphor of expert knowledge through audiovisual images of the financial crisis

AbstractBased on the question of the representability of economy and economics in audiovisual media, developments on the financial markets have often been discussed as a depiction problem. The abstractness and complexity of economic interrelations seem to defy classical modes of storytelling and dramatization. Nevertheless, public opinion about economic changes and dependencies crucially relies on audiovisual media. But how can the public communicate in images, sounds, and words about forces that are out of sight and out of reach, and can supposedly only be adequately grasped by experts? In a case study on audiovisual images of the global financial crisis (2007–), this paper tracks and analyzes a recurring motif: the staging of expert knowledge as close‐ups of expressive faces vis‐à‐vis computer screens in television news, documentaries, as well as feature films. It draws on the use of digital tools for corpus exploration (reverse image search) and the visualization of video annotations. By relating and comparing different staging strategies by which these “broker faces” become embodiments of turbulent market dynamics, the paper proposes to not regard them as repeated instantiations of the same metaphor, but as a developing web of cinematic metaphors. Different perspectives (news of market developments or historical accounts of crisis developments) and affective stances toward the global financial crisis are expressed in these variations of the face‐screen constellation. The paper thus presents a selection of different appearances of “broker faces” as a medium for an audiovisual discourse of the global financial crisis. A concluding analysis of a scene from Margin Call focuses on its specific intertwining of expert and screen as an ambivalent movement figuration of staging insight. Between the feeling of discovery (of a potential future threat) and the sense of being haunted (by a menacing force), the film stages the emergence of a “broker face” in an atmospheric tension between suspense and melancholy. We argue that the film thereby reframes the motif and poses questions of agency, temporality, and expert knowledge.

About the audiovisual analysis: linguistic and semiotic constraints

Our article mainly deals with the constraints relating to the specificities of audiovisual discourse. Admittedly, this one presents itself under a double aspect: the text and the image which lead to a plural interpretation of the whole making the reading more difficult. Our example of audiovisual discourse submitted for analysis is the fable « Le lion et le rat ». Among the studied linguistic elements, we can mention the lexicon and the prosody at the level of the text, and the space and the iconographic codes at the level of the image, aiming to finally arrive at the point of view adopted by the analysis, that of the complementarity of the two signs.

“No Brazil exists”: Conspiracist Atmospheres and Reactionary Worldview in Documentaries by Brasil Paralelo

this work has the goal of analyzing the elements and articulations of a conspiracist imaginary present in the documentary “Pátria Educadora”, a product of the streaming service Brasil Paralelo. My main hypothesis is that such imaginary must be investigated not only on the semantic level of meanings engendered by the audiovisual discourse, but also on the dimension of the atmospheres that act as co-adjutants for said discourse. This analysis must take place in the interface between the field of political studies, affects and communication technologies.

PLATFORM VISIONS AND INVASIONS: SPATIAL (RE)IMAGINATIONS IN BIG TECH DISCOURSE

This panel analyzes the textual and audiovisual discourses in which big tech companies envision social spaces and their platforms’ roles in relation to those spaces. The panel asks: What are the visions of human life and technology that big tech companies narrate in relation to public and social spaces? And how do these tech-generated visions compare to current insights in and critiques of how these companies intervene in and disrupt social spaces? Situated within the field of critical platform studies, the panel’s premise is that the discourses produced by tech companies form an integral part of these companies’ interventions in people’s relations with themselves, others, and their environments. In order to develop a critical understanding of the platform society, it is crucial to examine those discourses through which tech companies present themselves almost as state-like powers that can be trusted with “public” services. Employing methods of textual and visual analysis, this panel offers such perspective. In its analysis of big tech’s spatial visions, the panel moves between different scales of spaces (domestic, educational, urban, extraterrestrial). In relation to these spaces, the panel articulates a discrepancy between the visions of life produced by tech companies and big tech’s invasive, perhaps even extractivist and colonial logic.

Unmuting leadership: the impact of Zelensky’s social media strategy at the inset of the Ukrainian War

Since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, President Zelensky has used his social networks to request international support. This research analyzes the audiovisual discourse of the hegemonic networks during the first 40 days of the humanitarian war crisis in the context of risk communication. The contribution of this research relates to the unveiling of a new era where social media platforms are no longer the underdog of traditional media. This paper analyzes the visual content of President Zelensky’s most followed social media profile, Instagram. This paper builds on previous work examining the political leaders of the most affected European countries during the first days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and how they enhanced the use of their social media profiles in order to communicate about the crisis. In contrast to the use of social media during the COVID-19 pandemic, the audiovisual narrative created by the president of Ukraine optimized the social network’s resources and achieved an impactful and authentic approach to leadership during the first 40 days of crisis.

Analyzing the Encoding/Decoding of the Transnational Audiovisual Discourse of ISIS in Netflix’s Caliphate

Reception studies have become an essential element in the audiovisual translation research. In fact, the transnational turn in the study of media audiences has led to a reciprocity between reception studies and audiovisual translation research. This study aims at conducting a semiotic analysis of the Arab viewers’ reception of the Arabic subtitling of Netflix’s Swedish series Caliphate. Hence, the study poses the question of how the Arab audience incorporate the dominant audiovisual discourse about ISIS, which is semiotically encoded by Netflix through the medium of subtitling. To better understand Netflix’s dominant ISIS discourse, the study examines the socio-political context involved in the framing of this televised discourse. The study is product-oriented since it investigates the reception of Netflix’s ISIS audiovisual discourse by transnational audience. This investigation is conducted through applying Hall’s (1973) Encoding/Decoding model. The model assesses how audiences play an active role in decoding the media messages and discourses that target them. Decoding takes place within a milieu of ideological, political, social and economic contexts. The interplay between these contexts defines how audiences can choose to either incorporate or to resist the ideologically-driven messages delivered to them in the form of audiovisual discourses. This study proves that as part of the broader transnational audience, Arab audience subscribes to a preferred reading of the ISIS audiovisual discourse formed by Netflix.

Analyzing the Encoding/Decoding of the Transnational Audiovisual Discourse of ISIS in Netflix’s Caliphate

Reception studies have become an essential element in the audiovisual translation research. In fact, the transnational turn in the study of media audiences has led to a reciprocity between reception studies and audiovisual translation research. This study aims at conducting a semiotic analysis of the Arab viewers’ reception of the Arabic subtitling of Netflix’s Swedish series

Representation and evolution of the Chilean vision of the Pacific War through audiovisual discourse

El artículo analiza la representación y la evolución de la visión chilena de la Guerra del Pacífico (1879-1883) a través del discurso audiovisual, que incluye una categorización de sus formatos, el espacio temporal y su posicionamiento en un determinado contexto geopolítico-institucional. Se hace un análisis de contenido del capítulo Prat de la serie Héroes: La Gloria tiene su precio (Canal 13) a partir de la representación de la visión nacional, la representación del otro y de la guerra. Los resultados muestran una diversidad de formatos y una intensificación, en el periodo 2007-2010, en generar contenidos audiovisuales sobre este tema.

Post-fiction affect after the Spanish crisis in La plaga/The Plague (Ballús 2013) and Estado de malestar/State of Distress (Ruido 2019)

This article examines post-fiction affect in filmic landscapes produced in Spain over the last decade, focusing on La plaga/The Plague (Ballús 2013) and Estado de malestar/State of Distress (Ruido 2019). It suggests post-fiction affect as an innovative type of audio-visual discourse that confronts neo-liberal logic following the global financial crash of 2007–08 and the ensuing crisis years in Spain (2008–14). What characterizes these documentary-inspired works is that they do not intend to represent reality but rather intervene in it. Going beyond Steven Shaviro’s work on affect in cinema, this text examines the specific post-cinematic paradigms at the turn of the twenty-first century and renewed forms of sensibility through emergent technologies and political affect.

Negotiation with Reality: The Discursive Elements of the Dramatised Dissemination Documentary

The documentary genre is one of the audiovisual mechanisms with the greatest media efficiency in the transmission of reality. However, depending on the nature of the story, the construction of the textual and audiovisual discourse is altered. In this article, we consider the following questions: Is the documentary a format that is faithful to reality? What modifications does the discourse undergo so that the story is enhanced? To go deeper into this aspect, we intend to analyse the different elements that make up the documentary discourse in its transition from reality to fictionalised narrative. To this end, an inspection of the environmental dissemination documentary My Octopus Teacher (Netflix, 2020) will be carried out. An audiovisual proposal in which the coexistence between human and animal life turns environmental dissemination into a powerful instrument for transmitting scientific knowledge.

The Translation of Culture-bound References for Dubbing: A Model for the Analysis

Culture-bound references receive considerable attention from translation scholars, as they are regarded as one of the most difficult challenges that translators face. However, most studies examine the transmission of culture-bound references to the target audience in literary texts, while research that would examine the translation of culture-bound references in audiovisual discourse involving additional constraints is somewhat limited. Dubbing is considered to be one of the most challenging modes of audiovisual translation, mainly due to the synchronization applied to it. This paper presents a model for the analysis of the translation of culture-bound references dedicated specifically to dubbing. The authors of the paper discuss the complexity of the concept of culture-bound references, their categorization and the taxonomies of their translation procedures. The article discusses the specifics of dubbing, the typology of synchronies applied in dubbing and restrictions posed by it on the translation of culture-bound references.

Music in Radio Drama: The Curious Case of the Acousmatic Detective

AbstractThis article explores music’s role in radio drama. While musical aspects of early experimental radio dramas have often been explored, the music that figures in the Anglo-American radio play tradition has remained under-theorized. Borrowing interpretative tools from audiovisual discourses can help to elucidate some of the subtleties of the medium, but methodological inadequacies soon become apparent. As exemplars of modern radio dramatic technique, the BBC’s complete adaptations of Sherlock Holmes stories (1989–98) are explored, their music interwoven into the drama with consistent levels of subtlety. I draw primarily from Michel Chion’s application of the ‘acousmatic’, showing how the ambiguity concerning the location of the enveloping solo violin music – Holmes’s instrument – offers twists and turns to the agency of the unfolding narrative. I examine further how a sustained technique of intertextual allusion creates what I call a paradiegetic space, in which pre-existing music, heard within the dramas, provides a parenthetical narrative that unravels in parallel with the primary narrative, reflecting back on its themes, changing its meanings and moreover challenging our preconceptions about radio’s particular acousmatic zone.

Middle Eastern women influencers’ interdependent/independent subjectification on Tiktok: feminist postdigital transnational inquiry

ABSTRACT Subjectification has been defined as the formation of the subject via discourses while social media bundles audio-visual discourses that afford subjectification. However, what is meant by the ‘subject’ is not neutral and subjectification can differ according to cultural context. This study takes Middle Eastern women influencers’ subjectification on TikTok as a case to illustrate postdigital transnational subjectification. The novel framework of feminist postdigital transnational inquiry is applied to the corpus assisted study of three Middle Eastern women influencers’ short-form TikTok videos. The findings reveal observable audio-visual elements while embedding conceptual meanings surrounding subjectification. Discussion postulates subjectification on TikTok as living postdigital practices with transnational meanings both within and beyond their immediate context. It is suggested that subjectification could occur beyond regional, generational, traditional, fixed or essentialist terms. Theorising offers nuanced insights into the curatorial potential of TikTok for subjectification as consecutively interdependent with contextual issues, trends and deeper traditional audio-visual ontologies. At the same time, it suggests that platforms’ transnational affordances in Global South contexts occur independently to Northcentric frameworks and interpretations.

Illustrating Complex Networks

This audio-visual discourse presents how the practice of network mapping can illuminate the project brief through the lens of all stakeholders. One challenge of research-through-design is that the knowledge produced is often embodied within artefacts, unable to be shared or interrogated by others. There is therefore a need to produce artifacts which are accessible to an interdisciplinary audience. To demonstrate the complex nature of project networks there is a need to visually articulate the networks involved to show where stakeholders sit and who is connected to who. By visually representing this data, the networks are able to be interrogated by others beyond the individual researcher. This discourse will reflect upon issues in creative practice research and respond to the issue of how we can navigate interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary quagmires in practice-based research. This short methodological reflection will interrogate the value of a predetermined brief and suggest that through network mapping, a more nuanced brief can be created through the lens of all stakeholders. This discourse suggests that this method can be used by those in inter or transdisciplinary fields, beyond that of architecture, to illuminate transdisciplinary quagmires that may arise through the production of a project brief.

Metamorphoses of the conceptualization of SPORT in audio-visual translation

AbstractDue to the interrelation with culture, politics, economy and other major spheres of social life, SPORT discourse occupies quite a significant part of a modern society, therefore, the analysis of SPORT metaphors is important and necessary. The research of conceptual metaphor within the framework of translation studies is a relatively new and unexplored field in Lithuanian linguistics. Since SPORT metaphors are especially popular in political communication, the cases where sport in public discourse is considered as a visualization of policies and related areas are frequently investigated. The aim of the research was to reveal translation strategies used for the translation of SPORT metaphors from English to Lithuanian in audiovisual discourse related to SPORT. The research revealed that four translation strategies, namely: word for word translation, substitution, paraphrase, complete omission and retention were employed by the translators. The results of the research also demonstrated, that the most frequent source domain for the sport metaphors was WAR, which was the most frequently preserved using word for word translation strategy. In the case of other translation strategies, either the source domain was substituted in the translated text, or, in the majority of cases, the metaphorization was escaped. The target domain SPORT was represented similarly in both the source and the target languages, either implicitly by a larger context, or explicitly by lexical units containing a semantic element “related to SPORT”. The research revealed that while choosing the translation strategy for the translation of conceptual metaphors, three key factors should be taken into consideration, such as cultural, cognitive and sociological factors.Conceptual metaphors are an inseparable part of SPORT and they reveal in what terms SPORT can be defined in a particular culture. In order to understand how conceptual metaphors are perceived and what ideas are conveyed it is necessary to analyse the way they are transferred from the source culture to the target one.

The reception of swearing in film dubbing: a cross-cultural case study

ABSTRACT Swear words express and arouse emotions and due to their taboo-contravening origin are charged with an offensive potential. By mirroring the functions they perform in real life, they contribute to the makeup of audiovisual language and intensify filmic speech. Although swearing has long attracted the attention of audiovisual translation research, little consideration has been paid to viewers’ reactions. To address this gap, the present paper engages with the reception of swear words in film dubbing, while exploring the differences across two distinct linguacultures. Through a questionnaire-based methodology, it compares two groups of Italian and Spanish university students and their reactions to dubbed vis-à-vis domestic film clips. The results suggest that both Italian and Spanish groups’ tolerance for swearing onscreen is quite high. The Spanish participants, however, appear to be more lenient towards this phenomenon and more permissive with the staging of potentially offensive language in home productions. By contrast, Italian participants show similar levels of acceptance when they react to swearing in dubbing and Italian filmic speech. The two groups’ overall responses and their diverging orientations are discussed with reference to the cross-linguistic and intercultural dimensions of film viewing and distinctive preferences in audiovisual discourse.

From the tool to the spatial metaphor: Graphical user interface and audiovisual creation in new media

This article is set within a technological paradigm shift that denotes a transition from hardware to software and that, by means of applications and operating systems, plays a central role in the sociocultural sphere, intervening in the creation, classification and distribution of cultural objects. The aim of this research is to delve into how the graphical user interface (GUI) integrates into contemporary audiovisual discourse, focusing on its potential as a spatial metaphor. To that end, a theoretical framework is built on the concept of space as a tool and its instrumentalization in the GUI throughout the years, with a view to design a taxonomy in relation to the different ways in which the GUI integrates into digital image composition. The article concludes that the ability to operate in the virtual and physical space, moving between the logic of the tool and its potential as spatial metaphor, provides the GUI with the necessary specificity to be considered a key cultural element for analysing new media’s visual identity.