Multimodal Discourses Research Articles

Telegramming Hate: Far-Right Themes on Dark Social Media

Background: This study empirically examines the multimodal discourses of far-right groups on mobile apps. Many fringe groups find Telegram a convenient platform to spread hate speech without the need to censor their content or fear being blocked from the platform. Analysis: This study collected all the posts from 15 far-right Telegram channels. The data was analyzed using a mixed-method approach, including an examination of profile images, hashtags, mentions, and emojis that have been weaponized to assist in hate dissemination. Conclusion and implications: The findings show that one major theme on Telegram revolves around white peoples’ perceived grievances and discussions on conservatism followed by the minorities as the problem.

Fidelis ad mortem: multimodal discourses and ideologies in Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter (non)humorous memes

ABSTRACT This paper reports the findings of a study of two automatically generated corpora of multimodal digital items user-tagged as ‘Black Lives Matter memes’ and ‘Blue Lives Matter memes’. The central aim is to flesh out the memetic trends representing the discourses and ideologies on the Black and blue memescape, which is explored in the wake of the most infamous but interest-generating tragedy in the history of the Blue Lives Matter movement, namely George Floyd's death at the hands of white police officer Derek Chauvin. Studied through a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analytic lens, the internet memes are shown to contribute to the polyvocal political discussion and, with some neutral or ambiguous exceptions, to display a positive (pro-) or – more often – negative (anti-) stance on each of the opposite movements (with anti-BLM items consituting the largest category in the dataset). Also, contrary to the well-entrenched conceptualisation of memes as a type of humour, the majority of the memes at hand manifest no humorous potential. Humour is present mainly among the negative-stance memes, which points to the disparagement of a target as a concomitant of humour in the memes on this serious political topic.

A Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis of English Micro-lectures

Lim (2019) states that one challenge for the researchers in multimodal discourse analysis is to describe and discuss the interplay across various semiotic resources. English micro-lectures, as a kind of popular and widespread teaching materials in the information age, are typical multimodal discourses involving multi-semiotic resources. This article adopts the systemic-functional synthetic framework for multimodal discourse analysis from Zhang Delu (2018) to explore the relationship of various modes involved in excellent English micro-lectures and further examine how the semiotic resources cooperate and interact to construct communicative meaning. By analyzing and interpreting the context of culture, the meaning, the lexico-grammar, the media and the substance systems of involved modes in micro-lectures, it proves that English micro-lectures demonstrate complicated intersemiosis and various modes cooperate in a perfect way in meaning construction. This comprehensive investigation of semiotic systems sheds light on teachers’ mode choice and teaching design in producing micro-lectures and students’ learning strategies of micro-lectures in the mobile-assisted learning environment.

Fantasy Themes, Symbolic Power, and Twitter: A Multimodal Analysis of Vice President Kamala Harris’s First 90 Days

The first 90 days are crucial for new employees to build credibility in the organizational context. This phenomenon is also applicable to political office holders, who need to build the confidence reposed in them by the electorates. In the present study, I analyze Vice President Kamala Harris’ own tweets to assess the fantasy themes and portrayal of power in her first 90 days. Findings indicate that Kamala Harris’s tweets construct her public persona as a busy and exemplary Vice President who enjoys total spousal support. This can be described as an image-building strategy which enhances her credibility and portrays her as authentic. Vice President Harris also portrays symbolic power through her multimodal discourses which involve actions and symbols by her association with the armed forces, her moderation of official meetings and the display of her swearing-in functions. Her tweets also highlight the Biden administration’s resolve toward racial and gender inclusivity.

Mapping reflexivity in situ: A multimodal exploration of negotiated textbook discourses in Korean university EFL classrooms

The present study identifies and maps the reflexive praxis of two experienced English as a foreign language (EFL) instructors as they reconstruct and negotiate textbook material in situ. An abundance of critical studies underscoring social injustices in the contents of globally published EFL textbooks do not sufficiently address the negotiation of their multimodal discourses during class time. Although reflexive teaching practice in language learning classrooms has a robust pool of research, limited scholarly attention has been given to the active negotiation of a textbook’s multimodal discourse in Korean university classrooms. The present study asks: (1) How do two instructors at different Korean universities negotiate the contents of an EFL textbook with their students during class? (2) How do the students react to the multimodal discourse negotiated in their textbooks? (3) What pedagogical implications do the findings lend to EFL textbook instruction in Korean university contexts? Using Norris’ (2004) framework for video transcription of multimodal interaction in two Korean university English communication classes, the findings reveal that reflexive negotiation between students and instructors is a kind of rhetorical accomplishment that lessens the potential for cultural marginalization in the multimodal discourse of EFL textbooks. Implications suggest that textbook reflexivity in situ raises the value of student EFL learning investments.

Multilingual and multimodal mediation in online intercultural conversations: a translingual perspective

This study explored peer groups’ mediation processes in the digital space. Building upon translingual research and multimodal discourse analysis, the researcher analysed video transcript excerpts of oral conversations and on-screen interactions among university students of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. This article focuses on multilingual and multimodal mediation practices, which include polyaccented exemplification, bilingual interpretation, intercultural comparison, transnational definition, polyphonic performance and multimodal instruction (N = 24). The results show that the students attended to dynamic uses of English, Chinese and other languages as multilingual franca while communicating affect and stance through embodied expressions and shared screens in stylised multimodal discourses. The translingual analyses emphasise the students’ collaborative transformations of English as a lingua franca (ELF) communication into playful interactions within digitally mediated networks of relationships. This study suggests that online peer mediation provides useful methods for developing university students’ translingual awareness and capability for participating in intercultural conversations.

Women's Empowerment, Agency and Self-Determination in Afrobeats Music Videos: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis.

Stemming from a broader PhD project, this article argues that neoliberal post-feminist cultural sensibilities–entrenched in contemporary popular culture–about empowered, agentic and self-determining women, are regressive for the feminist advancement of gender-relational equality in the African context. To arrive at this conclusion, the central aim was to elucidate whether the gender-performative representations prioritised in the multimodal discourses of Afrobeats music videos are implicated in post-feminist sensibilities and if so, in what ways and to what effect? Given the continent’s richly diverse, yet largely heteropatriarchal, sociocultural formations, I argue that ideas about empowered, agentic and self-determining (black) African women are–based on the limited purview offered through the multimodal discourses of a small corpus of Afrobeats music videos–no more than sociocultural façades as opposed to gender-relational realities in our context. The article relied on a multimodal critical discourse analysis of a total of nine music videos drawn from the PhD project’s larger corpus of 25 Afrobeats music videos, their accompanying song lyrics, as well as a selection of YouTube viewer comments extracted from the analysed music videos. In critically exploring the gender-relational depictions prioritised in the analysed music videos, I argue for the consideration of what I am coining “misogyrom”; a gender-relational cultural sensibility which, in tandem with a post-feminist sensibility partly undergirding the multimodal discourses of these music videos, effectively veil this popular musical genre’s evidently sexist and misogynistic undertones that subvert potentialities of empowered, agentic and self-determining black African women.

Historical images of teachers and their underlying ideologies in Swedish academia: Multimodal discourses from 1950 and 1980

This study aims at exploring multimodal discursive images of academic teachers from 1950 and 1980 in Sweden. Using a discourse-historical approach, linguistic and visual data were analysed in a government report and three media sources related to a single Swedish university. Findings reveal how four dominant ideologies of academic teaching contributed to constructing eight discursive images of teachers via various stakeholders. Overall, a discursive degradation of academic teachers could be noticed between 1950 and 1980. Also, the image of teachers changed from societal critics in 1950 to political critics in 1980, when the government forced scholars to become all-round labourers processing the new mass of students. In turn, this led to an undecided debate about the scholarly role of teaching researchers. Throughout the material, female academics were almost invisible, and a feminist voice was absent. The image of academic teaching is a gendered issue that deserves further attention.

Digitally-mediated parent–baby touch and the formation of subjectivities

This article examines how the use of emergent smart baby monitors re-mediates parent–baby touch, notions of connection, parental sensing and the interpretation of babies’ bodies, and contributes to the formation of subjectivities. Domestic baby monitors are a mid 20th-century phenomenon which normalizes parental anxieties. While baby monitoring is not new, the ‘next generation’ of wearable bio-sensing baby monitors offers a different relationship to the body via the physiological tracking of babies, and the sending of information or alerts to parents’ via connected mobile apps. These devices have been associated with creating unnecessary parental anxiety and the digital ‘replacement’ of parental touch, although little research exists on their use in the context of parent–infant interaction or touch. The authors present a qualitative case study of one such technology, Owlet, to explore how parents experienced, understood and negotiated the discourses of parent–infant touch that circulate around and through Owlet, with particular attention to the relationship between visual and tactile resources. The study focuses on both its multimodal design and take-up by parents through analysis of interviews with the Owlet designer, Owlet as a product, focus groups with parents and families’ home experiences of Owlet. Data is analysed through a tri-part lens, which first combines multimodal social semiotic and sensory ethnographic approaches, and then the analytical concept of governmentality. The findings are discussed in relation to four analytical themes: (1) creating a desire for digitally mediated touch; (2) spatiality of digitally mediated connection; (3) formulating the ‘right kind’ of touch; and (4) reconfiguring ‘knowing touch’. The authors discuss multimodal discourses pertinent to the shaping of parent–baby touch practices including: rationality and efficiency; individualism, autonomy and freedom; and self-improvement and empowerment. They conclude that the discourses that coalesce around Owlet contribute to the reconfiguration of parent–baby touch and the formation of neoliberal subjectivities.

Memes y procesos de semiosis de la pandemia en México

Para reflexionar sobre procesos de semiosis relacionados con la pandemia por el SARSCoV-2/COVID 19 en México, se analizan memes que circularon en Internet en la primera mitad del año 2020. A partir de un marco teórico interdisciplinario se muestra cómo estos discursos digitales refuerzan la discriminación y la exclusión, propagan ideologías globales, son vehículo para la expresión colectiva de emociones y fueron un recurso semiótico para reforzar procesos súbitos y masivos de coerción semiótica (como la sana distancia o el confinamiento) o para contribuir a la reconversión semiótica que ha implicado la “nueva normalidad”.

Establishing a zone of prioritized curricularivity: exploring a critical approach to negotiating multimodal discourses in EFL textbooks

Abstract University English as a foreign language (EFL) programs in expanding circle communities often pressure instructors and students to use globally published EFL textbooks for reasons more socio-political than pedagogical. While some critical studies underscore multimodal discourse to be an under-appreciated source of dominant social narratives in EFL textbooks, few have investigated their live negotiation in classrooms. To address the challenges negotiating potentially harmful social narratives in EFL textbooks, the present study proposes a two-step model for achieving a zone of prioritized curricularivity (ZPC). The model informs reflexive teaching practice in EFL instruction because it necessitates an understanding of a) the curricular commonplaces of a particular EFL program and b) the power and ideologies in the multimodal discourse of their textbooks, to mitigate perceived social injustices in the textbook lessons as they are negotiated “in situ.” Demonstrated in vignettes, featuring two EFL courses at Chung-Buk National University in Cheong Ju city, Korea, two instructors used the ZPC framework to inform their reconstruction of multimodal discourses in their EFL textbooks to inculcate student involvement and participation. A novel, multimodal interactional analysis of video recordings looked at proxemics, gaze, spoken language, head movement, auditory emphasis, and gesture and discovered that each instructor recontextualized, neutralized, or skipped much of the multimodal discourse in the lessons. The findings suggest that a ZPC is achieved when the efforts by instructors to recontextualize textbook lessons in situ is met with positive feedback from students in the classroom – noted as heightened attentiveness, happy or cheerful participation, and enthusiastic discussion. The implications suggest a ZPC can help instructors and students and in EFL programs in any expanding circle culture because it can simultaneously improve student learning/acquisition in the classroom, diminish dominant, culturally marginalizing textbook content, while raising the value of student investment in EFL learning.

Interdiscursivity in corporate financial communication: an analysis of earnings videos

PurposeFinancial communication produces various texts, among which are earnings videos. The videos employ language and image in multimodal discourses to convey specific social meanings about corporate performance. The purpose of this paper is to select earnings videos and study their incorporated genres, styles and discourses.Design/methodology/approachInterdiscursivity permits hybridity because it mixes the choice of genres, styles or discourses. An interdiscursive analysis is conducted on earnings videos in English, French and Spanish from corporations in the global finance industry. It involved three sequential stages: (1) to detect the discourses, (2) to name the discourses and (3) to consider the function of the discourses.FindingsEarnings videos are hybrid because interview and presentation genres, formal and casual styles and the discourses of financial accounting, strategic management and public relations are encountered. The genres, styles and discourses are interwoven to create an interdiscursive mix, which constructs earnings through a (pseudo)personal social relation and easified discourses. The multimodal discourses convey robust corporate performance in an interim, and their use is symptomatic of marketization. Corporations may “market” their performance to seem like a worthwhile investment to persuade (potential) investors.Originality/valueThe paper enriches existing research in financial communication because it studies how multimodal discourses in earnings videos are tailored for marketization. The videos have not been analyzed, and their analysis complements earlier studies on other financial communication texts. The analysis examines discourses through language and image features, whose co-deployment conveys meaning about corporations.

A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of the Interactive Meaning in Public Service Advertisement

On the basis of Kress and van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar based on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics, this study explores the interactive meaning in three public service advertisement multimodal discourses, adding evidence to the assumption that Systemic Functional Linguistics can be applied to the multimodal discourse analysis of public service advertisement in a feasible and operational manner.

Young creators in open spaces: digital ethnography

The goal of this paper is to analyze the creative processes undertaken in a community of teenagers participating in entertainment workshops designed to develop digital literacies. The main goal is to outline support strategies to generate digital literacy among young people who participate in social networks. We adopt an ethnographic and action research approach to explore the creative process undertaken in an informal educational environment. Methodologically, narrative reconstructions are combined with an analytical approach. The results obtained were three-fold: 1) Specific audiovisual content depends on the material and social context in which it was generated. 2) When multimodal discourses are used, their use is conditioned by the mobile applications that young people use and the need to integrate different modes. 3) The conversations and practices that take place in the workshop focus young people’s attention on creative and critical practices when using social networks such as Vine and Instagram.

Similarities and Differences in Interpreting Multimodal Discourses Between “Decoders” and “Encoders”

Similarities and Differences in Interpreting Multimodal Discourses Between “Decoders” and “Encoders”

Multiliteracies in world language education

Multiliteracies in world language education

‘Off to the best start’?

This study critically examines the multimodal discourses of baby-feeding practices in contemporary health promotion in the UK. Comparing two parallel texts from the ongoing Start4life campaign (one dedicated to breastfeeding, the other to bottle/formula feeding), our multimodal critical discourse analysis identifies a series of recurring, multisemiotic strategies through which these texts aim to promote breastfeeding as the most desirable, natural and even morally responsible method of infant nutrition. These discursive strategies, we argue, are underpinned and driven by neoliberal assumptions about infant feeding, health and risk, which fail to take into account the structural constraints that affect the take-up of the ‘ideal’ of breastfeeding, all the while propagating unobtainable and often contradictory notions of total motherhood and familial relations - discursive moves that can have negative consequences for the health and wellbeing of new mothers and their infants.

Écfrasis y fantasía en "El libro de los portales", de Laura Gallego = Ekphrasis and fantasy in "El libro de los portales", of Laura Gallego

In the first decades of the 21stcentury, fantastic literature has a great popularity not only among young readers. Laura Gallego is one of the most successful writers on this topic. We analyze her work El libro de los portales, where the ekphrasis sets the plot in a context of creation of possible worlds through painting. We also mention the use of multimodal discourses in the promotion of the book through the book trailer and the website of the writer.

From code‐mixing to mode‐mixing in the European context

ABSTRACTThe paper presents four representative case studies of English in Europe influencing local language use in print advertising (Slovenia, Croatia and Italy) and social media online (Wales). For this purpose, three touristic identification displays (including brand name, slogan and logo) and one Instant Messaging conversation between teenagers are investigated, where by close linguistic and graphic analysis of the data it is shown how English serves to express the national identities of product (advertising) and person (e‐communication) projected in the texts. This is achieved by the English mediating the desired identity semiotics by both its verbal and visual properties, which generate the intended social meanings semantically via homophoric reference and intertextuality. In this way, English contacts are co‐realised with the local language as co‐text and/or context in (multilingual and) multimodal discourses where code‐mixing expands to mode‐mixing.

Toward a Poetics and Pedagogy of Sound: Students as Production Engineers in the Literature Classroom

M discussions of successful efforts to engage students in multi-modal discourses and prepare them for adapting to digital formats have focused on composition and creative writing classrooms. Cynthia Selfe, Lev Manovich and others have called for aural, visual, and other multi-modal approaches not only because of diverse learning styles and ever-changing technologies of communication, but also because these modes are important to different communities and cultures (Selfe 616). In literature classes, even if we use multi-modal assignments, the focus on writing critical analysis though a creative practice may seem more distanced from the generative aspects of “making” in a composition or creative writing classroom. This distinction, with its blurry edges, echoes the debate among digital humanities theorists between theorizing and making. I would argue that literature classrooms in the 21st Century are spaces ripe for exploring multi-modal experiences that mix up the critical and the creative, theorizing and “making.” Literature classrooms can incorporate more of what Amanda Stirling Gould calls a “makerspace learning environment” (26) so that we not only think about, but “think with” the media we use (Hayles, How We Think 24). Leading digital humanities scholars contend that [t]he social, political, and ecological challenges of the 21st century demand significantly more than textual analysis or recitations of inherited content. These problems (and opportunities) will need people trained to create synthetic responses, rich with meaning and purpose, and capable of communicating in a range of appropriate media, including but not limited to print. (Burdick, Drucker, Lunenfeld, Presner, and Schnapp 25)