Aug 24
ThE CLOwNbook review
AUTHOR: Jeremy Munday
TITLE: Evaluation in Translation
SUBTITLE: Critical points of translator decision-making
PUBLISHER: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
YEAR: 2012
REVIEWER: Daniele Russo, University of Milan
SUMMARY
The overarching idea of this volume is that translation and interpretation can
be seen as a means through which different perspectives from both political
and personal viewpoints can be transferred into a target culture; therefore,
this book investigates the linguistic signs of a translator’s intervention and
subjective evaluation when translating an oral or written text. The main
theoretical model adopted is drawn from appraisal theory (Martin and White
2008), which sets out to describe the different components of a speaker’s
attitude, the strength of that attitude (gradation) and the degree of
alignment between the speakers, the sources of attitude and the receiver
(engagement). This theory is based on Systemic Functional Grammar (Halliday
1994, Halliday and Mathiessen [sic] 2004) and focuses specifically on the
interpersonal metafunction of language that relates to the social
interactivity between the writer and the reader. The author investigates the
translator’s mediation, or intervention, through an analysis of evaluation
based upon the appraisal model in various translational contexts.
The volume is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1 is a theoretical
introduction to the main notions regarding appraisal theory and how these can
be applied to translation. The theory is subsequently tested on a range of
translational contexts in order to reveal the points wherein subjectivity can
be encountered and the decision-making processes associated with them. The
following chapters are dedicated to these scenarios.
Chapter 2 investigates the simultaneous interpreting of a key political event
— US President Barack Obama’s inaugural address given on the 20th January
2009 in Washington DC. This speech received world-wide coverage and was
translated or interpreted in different languages in various media in a great
number of countries. This variety of versions provides a good opportunity to
analyze the strategies adopted by the translators. In this chapter three
different translations into Spanish are analyzed, along with written
translations of the same speech, and translations into other languages as well
(namely French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, and American Sign Language). As in
this speech judgment is expressed mainly through lexical expressions, the
author suggests that the “graduation” (standardization) of certain critical
points is context-dependent and is performed by translators and interpreters
to maintain the style of the speech and convey the message by avoiding
culture-specific references that are not easily grasped by foreign audiences.
The viewpoints of professional technical translators as to what is critical in
a text are dealt with in Chapter 3, in which the author presents a survey
which he carried out through direct telephone and email interviews and by
analysing a number of discussions on the online forums KudoZ and SENSE. The
data shows that evaluation strategies are deemed fundamental even in the
translation of technical texts, which are usually believed to be more
objective and less subject to interpretation. In this process information
technologies are vital to cover gaps in the translator’s encyclopedic
knowledge and the lack of direct correspondences between source and target
texts.
Chapter 4 focuses upon the literary translator and reviser. In this chapter
translator archives are used to research decision-making processes through the
revisions made at different points of drafts involving multiple subjects, i.e.
author, translator, editor, and reviser. The analysis of the exchange of ideas
between these subjects helps to explain some of these decisions and to point
out the main difficulties in their texts. Three case studies are described:
the revision of the Penguin translation of a text by the 1st century Roman
historian Tacitus, in which paratexts and extratextual factors play a vital
role in determining translation strategy; the translation and revisions of
novels and essays of the Peruvian Nobel prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, where
the copious correspondence between all the participants show us their points
of view; and the translation and self-revision by translator David Bellos of
the novel “Life: A User’s Manual” by George Perec. These texts are accompanied
by a great number of archival documents, which, in the author’s opinion, have
so far been underutilized by translation scholars. In the first case, the
paratextual material (preface and endnotes) imposes a specific reading on the
reader, which underlines the misinterpretation of the text by Nazi Germany
(the translation was carried out in the end of World War II) in supporting its
political agenda. In the second case the correspondence between the translator
and Vargas Llosa points out that the most culture-specific elements of the
source texts, such as Peruvian expressions and word related to the flora and
fauna of that country, tend to be more standardized in the target texts,
possibly to bring the narrative context closer to the target reader. Perec’s
novel, the third case study, is characterized by word puzzles, puns and a
large number of intertextual references, all of which represent a great
challenge for a translator. The analysis of the translator’s self-revision of
this translated text show the translator’s intention to make the language more
idiomatic through lexical and syntactic changes in order to avoid calques from
the French text.
In Chapter 5 translation variation is the object of an experiment involving
the translations by various translator-trainee students of the same extract of
about 300 words from Jorge Luis Borges’s short story “Emma Zunz.” The purpose
of the experiment is to see what remains invariant in most of the students’
target texts and what is subject to the most variation. The results are then
compared with some of the students’ translations in the technical field. The
conclusion of this study is that in literary texts, variation is mostly found
on the syntagmatic axis of language (more specifically, at the level of the
individual word) whereas in technical texts the paradigmatic axis (the
disposition of phrases in sentences) is most often involved.
The author’s final conclusions are presented in Chapter 6. He insists on the
usefulness of appraisal theory for the study of translation. The different
case studies in the previous chapters tell us much about the process of
establishing equivalents between source text and target text involved in
translation. As a constant evaluative process, translation requires checking
all possible target texts against the source text in order to balance the
gains and losses of each choice. Therefore, translators mostly show a
“tactical” attitude as they both reproduce and rework the source text (more
often unconsciously but sometimes consciously). This chapter concludes with
future directions of this research, such as the effects of the translator’s
experience in translation choices, the impact of text genre and selections,
and the investigation of reader response.
EVALUATION
The translational contexts summarized in the previous section constitute an
analysis of critical points (as defined by the author) in different modes
(oral or written translation), different genres, different languages, and with
different levels of expertise. This multiple perspective makes this volume
innovative for both its subject matter and the methodology. It is a book worth
reading for researchers and postgraduates studying translation theory and
practice, as it succeeds in combining a sound theoretical framework with
relevant case studies.
In order to tackle the issue of texts being influenced by the translator’s
views this book focuses on the translation process — rather than the product
— and points out the problem areas wherein the translator’s ideology can
interpose between the source text and the foreign reader. The appraisal model
is also tested in order to determine to what extent it can help when analyzing
the translator’s work. The findings of the empirical case studies indicate
that variation is dependent upon word class, as if in every text there is an
invariant core and another part susceptible of variation. Concrete nouns (e.g.
‘table, man, money’) proved the most stable in translation, as well as
abstract words with a precise semantic meaning (e.g. ‘fear’). The elements
that are more likely to show variation are adverbs and modal particles acting
as modifiers (e.g. ‘badly’), culture-specific references (e.g. ‘patchwork
heritage’), descriptive or judging adjectives (e.g. ‘shrinking, deprived,
run-down’), and verbs denoting attitude (e.g. ‘wield, harness’). In literary
translation, in particular, the author observes that markedness is often
reduced — and significantly never increased — in the initial stages but
intensification is adjusted at the revision stage, although the main concern
mostly remains a stylistic natural rendering in the target text.
The case studies analyzed in the book deal with a number of languages with the
support of English translations for those who do not command all of them. The
range of texts is so varied (literary texts, technical texts, students’
translations, oral political speeches, etc.) that Translation Studies scholars
will find interesting contributions for their specific genre of interest.
Compared with previous work in the field this book shows a very pragmatic
approach and provides sensible explanations for the role of evaluation in
translation. Furthermore, this book offer insights about further improvements
in translator and interpreter training and provides valuable contributions to
descriptive translation studies. The most valuable aspect of this book is that
it bridges the gap between academics and industry professionals.
REFERENCES
Halliday, Michael A. K. 1994. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London,
Arnold.
Halliday, Michael A. K and Christopher Mathiessen [sic]. 2004. An Introduction to
Functional Grammar. London, Arnold.
Martin, James R. and Peter R. R. White. 2008. The Language of Evaluation:
Appraisal in English. London, Palgrave.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Dr. Daniele Russo is a faculty member at the University of Milan, where he
teaches English Language and English Linguistics to undergraduates. His
research interests include translation criticism, diachronic linguistics,
medical specialised language and translation. He is also a translator of
fiction and specialised literature.
Jul 21
ThE CLOwNbook review
AUTHOR: Deborah Cameron
TITLE: Verbal Hygiene
SERIES TITLE: Routledge Linguistics Classics
PUBLISHER: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
YEAR: 2012
REVIEWER: Noriko Watanabe, Kwansei Gakuin University
SUMMARY
The volume reviewed here is a new edition of Cameron’s (C hereafter) book,
“Verbal Hygiene”, originally published in 1995. As the author mentions in the
Forward of the new edition, the volume’s main text includes no significant
revisions. Added to the old edition are a foreword (17 pages) and an afterword
(26 pages), which give an updated frame to this classic 17 years after its
first publication.
The Foreword begins with C’s definition of verbal hygiene: “the motley
collection of discourses and practices through which people attempt to ‘clean
up’ language and make its structure or its use conform more closely to their
ideals of beauty, truth, efficiency, logic, correctness and civility” (p.vii).
C emphasizes that verbal hygiene is neither wrong nor right, but exists
because the very notion of language and metalinguistic awareness of language
as a system calls for the practice of imposing normativity. C maintains that,
although there have been changes that pertain to language since the last
edition was published (e.g. the emergence of digital experts on language on
the net and the lessened authority of printed media), her thesis has not
changed since 1995. In fact, she has learned that verbal hygiene is even more
pervasive than she originally thought.
Chapter 1 lays out the issues that C discusses in the subsequent chapters. One
issue is the problems of prescriptivism. According to C, prescriptivism is a
type of verbal hygiene. Linguists view all varieties of English as equally
appropriate for certain contexts, and they do not necessarily make value
judgments about regional and social varieties. At the same time, however, C
points out that the philosophy of “leave your language alone” is also
ideological in itself. C sees both of the positions as not escaping
normativity. Attention to normativity is often magnified because linguistic
order stands for order of a different kind. For example, prescriptivism is
deemed important and necessary because it is often claimed that communication
will break down if it is neglected, and if communication breaks down, the
unity of a nation is threatened. The verbal hygiene of prescriptivism
represents, in C’s view, fear of fragmentation.
Chapter 2 points out that style in English can be hyperstandardized and
commodified, and that the ultimate goal of the verbal hygiene of style is not
uniformity and consistency, but financial and professional satisfaction.
Through her analysis of editorial practices of English-language newspapers and
publishers, as well as the genealogy of the modern writing style, C shows that
“stylistic values are symbolic of moral, social, ideological and political
values” (p. 77).
Chapter 3 reviews the grammar reform and the “hysteria” that surrounded the
Education Reform Act of 1988 in the United Kingdom. C considers the grammar
debate to be a case of moral panic, that is, the phenomenon of a social issue
suddenly receiving intense scrutiny accompanied with attributions of moral
significance that project a sense of urgency and distraught emotion. C points
out that conflicting emotions surface in debates about grammar: failure and
humiliation on one hand, and nostalgia about the good old days of order and
certainty on the other. According to C, grammar stands for moral values, and
the debate is generated out of anxiety over the state of British culture in
the context of emergent pluralism. Conservatives have taken the opportunity to
address the fear and anxiety about the state of British culture through
control of the English language and portrayal of the development of diversity
in linguistic matters as fragmentation of the nation. The stakes in the debate
have been multiplied by the emotional and moral implications that are linked
to political and ideological issues. In the debate in question, language
ultimately served to unite conservatives who feared losing support because of
their own fragmentation as a political party. Here, C proposes that linguists
should be involved in such a debate by proposing better alternatives based on
critical examinations of standards and values.
Chapter 4 focuses on concerns over political correctness as acts of verbal
hygiene. C discusses various debates over political correctness, including
feminist crusades for non-sexist language and controversy over racially
discriminatory expressions. In C’s view, political correctness politicizes
language, and makes it impossible not to offend someone; liberals accuse
people of violating the contract that there is a fixed, word-to-world
relationship, and conservatives accuse political correctness of abusing and
prescribing our relationship with language by restricting freedom of word
meaning. What is behind the tension between political correctness and its
opponents is the question of how a society with diverse points of view and
customs can communicate and possibly share common cultures. This chapter
introduces the idea that a perfect language, in which everyone agrees on what
certain words mean, is almost impossible. As a result of indeterminacy of
meaning, it all comes down to whose meaning prevails and who can be the
authority of word semantics.
Chapter 5 examines advice to women on how to use language. The coaching
literature teaches women to be more “effective” workers, leaders, and partners
in relationships with men. C analyzes the emergence of advice to women as
essentially portraying women as being different from men. It assumes
individual women should change their ways of behaving and use language so that
they can be more like men, or get along with men, for whom there is no need
for change. Aside from the coaching literature, the author’s dissatisfaction
comes from popular literature that is marketed as books on communication
between men and women. As an example, C points out that the readers of Debora
Tannen’s popular book “You Just Don’t Understand” liked reading it not because
it will change the way women speak, or challenge the dichotomy of women and
men’s speech, but because they could find themselves in the book and indulge
in the camaraderie that stories about frustrating communication with men
bring.
Chapter 6 inquires about the functions of verbal hygiene in society. The
intensity with which verbal hygiene is pursued raises questions about the
motives for the quest. C traces the motives to a desire for order and a fear
of disorder. She further states that it is not possible to eliminate verbal
hygiene, but it is possible to tame irrational impulses. C is critical of
linguists’ views that all language usages are equal and that it is natural to
have language change because these views certainly ignore ubiquitous acts of
verbal hygiene, such as correcting grammar and attaching social meanings to
certain forms. In C’s view, rationalization of correctness and normativity is
inevitable, and thus, she questions why linguists assert that such indexical
meanings do not exist.
In the Afterword, C comments on developments since the last edition was
published in 1995: technological advances, which have resulted in the
proliferation of non-standard language in the digital world; a semantic shift
of the term “political correctness”; brain-based accounts of gender
differences, which C terms “neurosexism”; and acts of verbal hygiene that
globalization brings.
EVALUATION
“Verbal Hygiene” is a major work in sociolinguistics that addresses the
critical issue of the relationship between English and its users. It documents
a wide range of activities with which English users in the United Kingdom
attempt to control others to conform to their ideal ways of using the
language. In turn, verbal hygiene is motivated by concerns of a different
dimension, such as political stance or fear of disorder. The author gives
careful thought to case studies of language-related arguments and the politics
that underpin and fuel emotionally charged responses to them. Much of C’s
analyses are applicable to discursive interventions at the metalinguistic and
metapragmatic levels in other modern societies with standardized language,
printed media, and formal education. For this reason, the theoretical
implications of the book go beyond English. Verbal hygiene is closely related
to research on language ideologies (Silverstein 1979, Schieffelin, Woolard &
Kroskrity 1998) and, to some extent, Language Management Theory (Jernudd &
Neustupný 1987, Spolsky 2009), as C acknowledges in the Foreword of the new
edition. While the literature on language ideologies also describes and
discusses heated arguments over languages in which such ideologies are
emergent, C’s book does an excellent job of capturing the psychological
aspects of the hygienic acts and the fastidiousness which originates in
emotional linkage to language. Thus, C’s work highlights how and why arguments
about language often turn into emotionally intense bickering.
One drawback of the way C analyzes verbal hygiene phenomena is that she tends
to focus heavily on explicitly articulated language ideologies and
metalinguistic commentaries. Even though C says that she is interested in the
public’s concerns over language, many of the examples come from published
material and comments of experts in the media, such as editors, authors,
activists, educators, politicians, newspaper columnists, and other linguists.
At times, more detailed data that can support C’s points seem to be missing.
For example, when she discusses a dispute over a particular incident at an
American university regarding whether the use of the words “water buffalo” was
racist, C interprets and imagines what the offended party must have thought
instead of finding support from newspaper articles or interviews (pp.
157-158). In addition, there is no reference given for the incident, and it is
not clear how C learned about it.
There are several interesting theoretical questions the book raises that are
still relevant 17 years after its original publication. The first question is
whether sociolinguistics should be socially engaged. C explicitly questions
the attitudes of linguists who refrain from making judgments on emergent
language matters because of their opposition to what she calls
“prescriptivism”. To C, it is a contradiction that linguists oppose
prescriptivism, while subscribing to the principle of non-involvement as if it
were a prescribed rule for them. In his review of C’s 1995 edition, Milroy
(1997) states that C’s characterization of linguistics here is not fair
because the field of linguistics is populated with scholars whose academic
interests are diverse, and because those who study various subfields of
linguistics are not engaged in norm-making, nor are they interested in making
prescriptive comments to the public on issues of language. Milroy may have a
point about the limitations of C’s view of linguistics, but the question here
is the extent to which linguistics should be constructed as socially relevant
and whether linguists should be engaged with the public when language is at
the center of controversy in the political arena. C is dissatisfied with and
disagrees with the vision of linguistics as it is. In other words, C would
like to propose a change in what linguists think they should do and urge them
to reexamine how linguistics should be conceived in relation to the public and
its concerns. That is an ambitious enterprise.
Although linguists should not forget nor choose to ignore that their research
agendas exist within a broader intellectual frame, including the value system
on which society is built, how linguists engage with society is complicated.
One major point C makes is that she believes in “rational” and “informed”
debates about language matters and that linguists should offer input to
debates over language issues. As she so clearly points out, however, arguments
about language tend to be linked to moral values, and if this recognition of
what language ideologies are is taken seriously, there should be no surprise
that the definition of ‘rational’ has extremely fuzzy boundaries. In fact, at
the end of the present edition, she remarks that her confidence in the public
engaging in rational discussions on politicized linguistic issues is waning,
to some extent (pp. 262-263).
“Verbal Hygiene” is indeed thought-provoking, but there is one issue C
discusses in her Afterword that could have been developed further, possibly
into an additional chapter for the new edition: the issue of the role of
English itself in the increasingly multilingual, borderless world. In her
Afterword, she presents stimulating discussions on how verbal hygiene is used
to manage problems that are brought on by diversity and globalization. For
example, C makes a reference to TV commentator and historian David Starkey’s
linking of speaking Jafaican, a variety of English originating in
multicultural neighborhoods in London, to a 2011 riot. In addition, C
discusses that speaking English is taken as a proof of subscribing to certain
political views and cultural values: English is constructed and conceived as
unifying the country, being modern, democratic, and rational, while other
languages such as Arabic are implicated as “irrational” (pp. 239-243). This is
reminiscent of the issues she examined in Chapter 3, but is reinterpreted in
the emergent context of the post-9/11 era. C’s closer examination of such
issues is likely to be productive.
Overall, “Verbal Hygiene” successfully makes its case that people’s
involvement with language matters is indeed unavoidable and that verbal
hygiene is a pervasive phenomenon. The second edition is merited because the
theoretical issues the book raises are still relevant and worth discussing,
although the present reviewer would have liked C to have added a chapter on
English in the age of globalization and plurilingualism.
REFERENCES
Jernudd, B. H. & Neustupný, J. V. 1987. “Language plannning: For whom?” In L.
Laforge (ed.), Actes du Colloque international sur l’aménagement linguistique
/ Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Language Planning. Québec:
Les Presses de L’Université Laval, 69–84.
Milroy, James. 1997 Review of “Verbal Hygiene” by Deborah Cameron 1995,
London: Routledge, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 1/1, 127–133.
Schieffelin, Bambi.B., Woolard, Kathryn.A., & Kroskrity, Paul.V. (eds.) 1998
Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.
Silverstein, Michael. 1979 “Language structure and linguistic ideology.” The
Elements: A Parasession on Linguistic Units and Levels. ed. Paul R. Clyne,
William F. Hanks, and Carol L. Hofbauer, Chicago Linguistic Society. 193–247.
Spolsky, B. 2009. Language Management. New York: Cambridge University Press.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Noriko Watanabe holds a Ph.D. in linguistics and has taught Japanese and
English at universities in the United States and Japan. Her research
interests include writing systems, language ideologies, and narrative
discourse.
Jul 20
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhbook review
EDITOR: Roberta Piazza
EDITOR: Monika Bednarek
EDITOR: Fabio Rossi
TITLE: Telecinematic Discourse
SUBTITLE: Approaches to the language of films and television series
SERIES TITLE: Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 211
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2011
REVIEWER: Julia Gillen, Lancaster University
SUMMARY
This collection of articles approaches an area of media studies relatively
rarely examined by linguists. A variety of approaches are taken to the
language of films and television series across British, American and Italian
cultures. The authors offer a variety of methodologies and perspectives on the
complexities of telecinematic discourse — more specifically, films, film
trailers and television series. One key theme taken up in several chapters is
that spoken dialogues of such genres have to differ from spontaneous discourse
at every linguistic level to be acceptable; authentic rhythms, content, and a
lack of teleological efficacy of everyday talk would not be tolerated. Yet at
the same time, an impression of verisimilitude has to be established in the
audience’s minds to enable a degree of suspension of disbelief. How such
dilemmas are realised in different genres is one significant focus of the
work, as are the ways in which individual characters can be differentiated.
The authors all argue that when working from a linguistic basis, it is
necessary to combine analyses that attend to other modes and offer diverse,
always detailed, demonstrations of their empirical work.
Chapter 1. Introduction: Analysing telecinematic discourse
Roberta Piazza, Monika Bednarek and Fabio Rossi
This chapter, by the editors, sets out to differentiate the two media
discourses studied — that of cinematic film and TV series. Four key issues
are identified: the relationship between represented and interactive
participants; the interface between the verbal and visual; the definition of
characters; and the relationship between real life and fictional discourses.
The authors explain and illustrate how the re-creation or re-presentation of
the world ”is always in line with the specific socio-cultural conventions of
the society in which telecinematic texts are produced. It is also in line
with a particular ‘media logic’ (Iedema 2001: 187) which differentiates these
products….” (p. 9). This sets the agenda for the following chapters, which
take different approaches to identifying and analysing how media logic
operates in specific examples.
Part I. Cinematic discourse
Chapter 2. Discourse analysis of film dialogues: Italian comedy between
linguistic realism and pragmatic non-realism
Fabio Rossi
Rossi demonstrates how the dubbed audio track featured not just in foreign
films, but also in Italian films, compares with spontaneous real-life talk. He
finds that film genres display fewer characteristics of spontaneous speech
such as redundancy, hesitation, overlap, etc., and show a higher degree of
coherence and cohesion. However, this aligns with audience expectations; just
as camera conventions are not naturalistic, but become expected, the
introduction of an ”excess of realism” would be jarring to the viewer.
Chapter 3. Using film as linguistic specimen: Theoretical and practical issues
Michael Álvarez-Pereyre
The author demonstrates how the very qualities that differentiate film
discourse from spontaneous real-life talk make it suitable for pedagogical
purposes. He points out that the objection that dialogues in films are
different from spontaneous speech is to ignore that substantial proportions of
language as it is encountered are not spontaneous. Thus, Álvarez-Pereyre
further develops investigation of, what he terms, ‘filmspeak’ as a genre.
Chapter 4. Multimodal realisations of mind style in Enduring Love
Rocío Montoro
‘Mind style’ is a stylistics term referring to the ”linguistic features that
project the peculiarities of characters’ cognitive make-up,” (p. 70) in the
author’s explanation. Here, Montoro extends the traditional language-based
approach of stylistics into a multimodal approach. She combines the analysis
of verbal signs as ”mind style indicators” (p. 69) with the analysis of
gestures and camera perspectives. Montoro aims to increase our sensitivity to
how qualities of characterisation achieved in the novel ”Enduring Love” are
skilfully realised in the film adaptation of the same name, including through
the use of camera angles and gesture.
Chapter 5. Pragmatic deviance in realist horror films: A look at films by
Argento and Fincher
Roberta Piazza
As is the case with other authors in this volume, Piazza is particularly
interested in how unconventional characters are depicted, here, in the genre
of ”realist horror” or ”slashers.” He demonstrates how deviance,
characteristic of horror films, is communicated through violation of Gricean
cooperative maxims. As the book exemplifies as a whole, this chapter
endeavours to offer an approach to film studies ”rooted in linguistic
stylistics” (p. 86) and, through painstaking work, to demonstrate the
benefits of this. That is, rather than offer a broad critique of the films,
Piazza considers very short sections intensively, examining the pragmatics of
language used against all elements of the multimodal realisation. It is shown
how in this genre the killers infringe the maxim of relevance, thus presenting
themselves to the audience as abnormal.
Chapter 6. Emotion and empathy in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas : A case study
of the “funny guy” scene
Derek Bousfield and Dan McIntyre
The authors take a pragmatic approach to examining linguistic, paralinguistic
and kinesic manifestations of fear, seen as deriving from a lack of empathy
between two characters. The careful analysis of a two minute and 30 second
scene includes a multimodal transcript, likely to be helpful as a model to
others investigating both linguistic and non-linguistic features of film. They
demonstrate how the emotion of fear is realised in the complex interplay of
modes.
Chapter 7. Quantifying the emotional tone of James Bond films: An application
of the Dictionary of Affect in Language
Rose Ann Kozinski
Kozinski shows how the language of ”official” James Bond films differs from
Austin Powers parodies in the expression of emotionality. She deploys the
Dictionary of Affect in Language (Whissell 2009) to enable quantitative
analysis. The parodies adopt a distinctive tone she terms ”pleasant and
active”, whereas the Bond films demonstrate greater variety over time. Their
tone relates partly to the specific actor and partly according to temporal
cycles of variation in plot.
Chapter 8. Structure and function in the generic staging of film trailers: A
multimodal analysis
Carmen Daniela Maier
This chapter demonstrates an approach to the analysis of comedy film trailers
through examining their narrative structure. The author creates a framework
for investigation drawing on the work of Labov & Waletzky (1967). Applying
this reveals how all the nine stages of the prototypical comedy film trailer
contribute to the purpose of promotion, some implicitly and some explicitly.
Each stage is also associated with certain kinds of information given and
functions. Each specific trailer varies in how many of the stages are used and
their precise sequencing, but overall the model appears robust.
Part II. Televisual discourse
Chapter 9. “I don’t know what they’re saying half the time, but I’m hooked on
the series”: Incomprehensible dialogue and integrated multimodal
characterisation in The Wire
Michael Toolan
This chapter combines quantitative and qualitative analyses of TV series texts
with audience research. Toolan makes use of Kozloff’s (2000) idea of
”linguistic opacity” as part of the aesthetics of the TV series,
demonstrating how a strategy of deliberately inducing comprehension problems
in the audience is, at first sight, paradoxically, one of the means through
which the audience is engaged. So the police officers’ struggles to interpret
the gang’s intercepted communications involve the audience in this process.
Toolan ends by examining how dialogues are embedded multimodally and explains
how, for many viewers, this work was exceptional in conveying psychological
depth and sociological plausibility.
Chapter 10. The stability of the televisual character: A corpus stylistic case
study
Monika Bednarek
Stability of characterisation is usually assumed to be important to TV series,
i.e., that they do not change drastically over time. Using a corpus
linguistics approach, Bednarek demonstrates how stability of characterisation
is achieved, while still permitting the character some room for stylistic
differentiation, important for engaging the audience. Central to her
investigation of the ”Gilmore Girls” are analyses of a character’s
diachronic language variation across seasons and variation according to
interlocutor. For example, a term may appear far more frequently in earlier
episodes as the audience is encouraged to identify a character’s likes and
dislikes, but can later become more implied as the character has become more
established.
Chapter 11. Star Trek: Voyager’s Seven of Nine: A case study of language and
character in a televisual text
Susan Mandala
Here, the development of a character through a TV series, an essential part of
the plot, is shown to be achieved in large measure through changes in
(im)politeness strategies. In this case, the character focussed upon makes a
journey from cyborg to near-human, linguistically realised through adaptation
to politeness norms. For example, her early lack of negative politeness (Brown
& Levinson 1987) is gradually modified as she mitigates face-threating acts.
Chapter 12. Relationship impression formation: How viewers know people on the
screen are friends
Claudia Bubel
Using conversation analysis, Bubel investigates alignment patterns among four
central characters of the TV series Sex and the City. The specific interest is
the negotiation of friendship through shifting alignment patterns and
interpersonal affiliation/disaffiliation. In analysing shifting alignment
patterns Bubel considers both the negotiation of intersubjectivity and the
display of common cultural attitudes. She also illustrates the ways in which,
during conversation the four central characters affiliate with, for example,
one other and thus disaffiliate, at least momentarily, with at least one
other.
Chapter 13. Genre, performance and Sex and the City
Brian Paltridge, Angela Thomas and Jianxin Liu
Drawing on Butler’s (2004) notion of performativity, the authors analyse how
gendered identities are performed through the genre of casual conversation. A
major issue here is multimodality: non-linguistic modes of expression
belonging to the character such as dress and gesture are significant, as well
as the means by which these are framed. This chapter links strongly with the
last in providing theorised readings of this TV show that, for many, was a
significant cultural event.
Chapter 14. Bumcivilian: Systemic aspects of humorous communication in
comedies
Alexander Brock
Brock explores the creation of humour at various levels of language in terms
of linguistic deviance or incongruity by discussing a wide variety of
examples. He shows how incongruity can reside at any level of language, for
example, phonological, semantic or in the construction of an alternative
reading of the world. Brock demonstrates how incongruities can become
predictable, thus endangering the effect of humour. He concludes that the
development of a more complex understanding of humour is needed.
EVALUATION
This is a genuinely innovative collection of texts, examining aspects of media
discourse from a variety of different linguistics-based approaches. I can
imagine that a number of the chapters will be much cited as they lead to
promising directions of further investigation. However, I do own to two
questions that keep lingering as I have read and then re-read this book,
wondering how best to communicate its qualities to prospective readers. I want
to achieve something more useful in an evaluation than a mere reflection of my
own subjective responses to the chapters, grounded in my personal experiences.
I find it difficult to move far from my subjective responses with what became
my first major question: Is it necessary for the reader to have engaged with
the particular film or TV series in question in order to relate to the
chapters, and does a depth of engagement (i.e. in practice a liking for the
film or TV series) help? I have to admit that in general, I did often more
vividly appreciate the authors’ approaches when I was already familiar with
the media product. So, for example, my own strong positive responses to ”The
Wire”, ”Sex and the City” and ”Star Trek: Voyager” assisted my
understandings of some of the chapters about TV series. In particular,
Toolan’s multifaceted approach to the language of ”The Wire” seemed
extremely informative and original. When I was not familiar with the topic, I
sometimes struggled to understand the authors’ points. For example, it was
completely reasonable of Piazza, Bednarek and Rossi to illustrate their
introductory arguments in Chapter 1 through an extract from ”No Country for
Old Men,” a 2007 Coen brothers film, as a substantial proportion of likely
readers may be assumed to have seen it. As it happens, I regret to admit I
have not. For me, the extract the authors chose to discuss seemed hackneyed
and lifeless. Two unsubtle pieces of characterisation jump off the page as
indicative of psychopathic travelling baddie first encountering a hapless,
defenceless victim. I emphasise, of course, that this is no comment against
the film, but rather a reference to how the text seemed narrow and clichéd to
me when unfamiliar with the full multimodal presentation. As a result, I
doubtless lost something in my understanding of the discussion.
Yet, to return to my original question, it was not always the case that
familiarity with the media product led to my learning more from or further
appreciating the chapters. Rossi’s chapter, working with dubbing in
mid-twentieth century Italian films, conveyed fascinating insights into the
nature of film language. There are many very good chapters in the book; each
possesses some good qualities, but space precludes me from writing a proper
appreciation of them all. In my opinion, Rossi’s and Toolan’s chapters were
the most informative, multifaceted and enjoyable to read. Toolan’s energy in
combining a number of different approaches positively fizzes off the page.
Through willingness to combine methods including audience research, he wisely
avoided the presumption of homogeneity of reception, that for me at the very
least flavoured some interpretations in other chapters.
My second question remains one that still genuinely puzzles me. For me, there
is a glaring dividing line between the two approaches taken in the book. Did
the editors expect this dichotomy to emerge? The issue here is between two
approaches to telecinematic discourse. The first approach, that is most
clearly introduced by the editors, and exemplified in most chapters, is an
explicit recognition of the crafted nature of telecinematic discourse. Both
Rossi and Toolan, among others, never lose sight of the artificiality of the
media product. All authors, whether explicitly or implicitly, contribute
insights into how scripts are written and become effective. However, some tend
to occlude attention to the realised character as crafted, and instead analyse
the language of characters virtually as if they were real. Personal intentions
and communicative means through which they are pursued are ascribed to the
character herself or himself. There is always some reference to the context as
a media product, but nonetheless, I felt the tone to be very different from
the more dominant recognition of media product as craft. I regret that the
editors did not choose to discuss this issue and matters arising — a
concluding chapter could have been fascinating.
In sum, this is a thought-provoking book, appropriate for those who wish to
experiment with diverse approaches to media discourse from linguistic
perspectives that take account of other modalities. The editors and publishers
have done an excellent job of presentation; the texts are enhanced by careful
figures and tables, and the composite index is admirable.
REFERENCES
Brown, Penelope & Stephen Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in
language useage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Butler, Judith. 2004. Undoing gender. New York: Routledge.
Iedema, Rick. 2001. Analysing film and television: a social semiotic account
of Hospital: an unhealthy business. In van Leeuwen, T. & Jewitt, C. Handbook
of visual analysis. London: Sage (183-204).
Kozloff, Sarah. 2000. Overhearing film dialogue. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Labov, William & Joshua Waletzky. 1967. Narrative analysis: oral versions of
personal experience. In J. Helm (ed). Essays on the verbal and visual arts.
Seattle: American Ethnological Society (12-44).
Whissell, Cynthia 2009. Using the revised Dictionary of Affect in Language to
quantify the emotional undertones of samples of natural language.
Psychological Reports 102: 469-483.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Julia Gillen is Senior Lecturer in Digital Literacies in the Literacy Research
Centre and Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster
University, UK. Her teaching responsibilities include supervising
dissertations in language and the media and convening an undergraduate course
called Understanding Media. She researches language in multimodal
interaction, approached through a sociocultural perspective. Fields of study
include: virtual worlds; Twitter; early childhood; sports journalism and the
Edwardian postcard.
Jul 20
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhbook review
AUTHOR: Nicholas J. Enfield
TITLE: The Anatomy of Meaning
SUBTITLE: Speech, Gesture, and Composite Utterances
SERIES TITLE: Language Culture and Cognition 8
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2012
REVIEWER: Katharine Parton, University of Melbourne
SUMMARY
This book analyzes utterances which occur using both speech and gesture.
Enfield argues that speech and gesture can be, in his examples, understood as
co-occurring signs which, in that co-occurrence, become composite utterances,
and as such, carry new, composite meanings. Enfield explores this perspective
on gesture and speech composite utterances through examples from speakers of
Lao, focusing first on pointing gestures with speech, and then examining
illustrative gestures with their co-occurring talk. He argues that in order to
understand social interaction and the meanings that people create with and for
one another in each interaction, it is the composite utterance (i.e. the
gesture plus speech) that needs to form the basis of interactional analysis.
In the book’s opening chapter Enfield argues that meaning’s genesis, following
a neo-Peircean semiotic and neo-Gricean pragmatic perspective, is not
language. Rather, language forms one part of the complexity of signs that
create meaning between people. Enfield first lays out examples of composite
utterances across a variety of modalities. He posits that meaning across
examples from artwork, such as paintings, requires an examination of visual
aspects and titles of paintings to understand the meaning the artist intends.
A photograph of a historically significant moment demonstrates that the
meaning of the photographic semiotic whole only becomes apparent when the
complexity of the photograph’s historical and social context is identified,
and thus, that meaning itself is composite in nature. Enfield goes on to
position his analysis of speech and gesture as signs within both gesture and
semiotic research.
The remaining chapters are grouped into two parts: the first deals with
deictic components of moves and the second with illustrative components of
moves. Enfield examines demonstratives, lip-pointing and hand-pointing as
deictic components and includes modeling, diagramming and editing in the
illustrative moves he discusses.
Chapter 2, on demonstratives, uses data from video-recorded interactions
between Lao speakers in a variety of face-to-face, naturally occurring
situations, from market places to riverside discussions. Enfield focuses on
the Lao system of spatial proximity description, arguing that, through an
examination of the speaker’s gestures, the two-term system ‘nii4’ and ‘nan4’,
previously defined as ‘proximal’ and ‘distal’, should be seen as
context-dependent and descriptive of social interactional space relations
rather than as a binary, static distinction. He argues that these
demonstratives rely on both semantic and pragmatic meaning for interactional
deployment, and as such, are composite utterances. Chapter 2 argues that the
meaning of ‘nii4’ and ‘nan4’ can be seen as constructed by interactants,
through the use of demonstratives, to create ‘engagement areas’ and
‘here-spaces’, which form the basis of Enfield’s analysis. He further argues
that these areas/spaces and ‘co-constructing’ uses of ‘nii4’ and ‘nan4’ are
conventionalized and predictable and that they are locally constructed with
fluid meaning, depending on the interaction and interactional space.
In opening Chapter 3, Enfield problematizes the labeling of so-called
‘lip-pointing’. He shows that it is a widely occurring phenomenon studied in
linguistics and gesture studies across a number of languages and geographical
locations. Chapter 3 surveys a number of lip-pointing examples from a variety
of languages, allowing Enfield to argue that lip-pointing rarely, if ever,
involves only the lips. Interactions between Lao speakers are again shown
using stills from video of speakers’ interactions, with a focus on the
relationships between lip-pointing and co-occurring hand-pointing and gaze
direction (both matched and mismatched with lip-pointing directionality).
Enfield concludes that the lip-pointing practice in Lao is used to describe
the location of referents, and, when combined with other deictic practices,
can result in varying interactional purposes.
Following the chapter on lip-pointing, Chapter 4 provides an account of an
empirical study of hand-pointing across Lao speakers. Here, the data comes
from both Lao interactions and semi-structured interviews eliciting pointing
gestures. Enfield argues that Big and Small (i.e. B-point and S-point)
gestures have different functions within Lao social interactions, but that
both types of gestures and the gestures’ co-occurring speech should be
considered as fundamentally composite utterances.
Part II of “The Anatomy of Meaning” focuses on the illustrative components of
moves using longer extracts of interaction (again, video-recorded) along with
transcriptions, including images taken from the recordings. The examples in
Chapter 5 are descriptions of the fishing equipment used locally and the
examples in Chapter 7 are explanations of kinship systems and marriage
practices within those kinship systems. Chapter 6 uses both kinship and
fishing examples.
In Chapter 5, Enfield discusses examples of descriptions of fishing equipment,
showing that the gestures which co-occur with the verbal descriptions model
the actual, physical equipment and its use. Supporting one of the main thrusts
of the book, the verbal description alone is insufficient to understand the
appearance and functionality of the fishing equipment, and therefore, the
speech and gesture must be understood, Enfield argues, as composite to access
the full meaning of the utterance. Further, he shows that these modeling
gestures are both combinatoric and linear in interactional uses. He argues for
a predominance of two handed symmetry in the first stage of the gesture
sequence, followed by one hand taking over the representation of the first
stage, while the other hand is able to manipulate what the first hand is now
‘standing for’. As such, Enfield argues that meaning from the composite
utterance is built over several gestural moves in a linear fashion.
Enfield builds on the modeling examples to put forward an argument that Lao
speakers use the body and gestures as cognitive artifacts. In Chapter 6, he
first gives a comprehensive overview of Lao kinship systems and the rules
governing marriage within that community. He then uses the examples of kinship
diagramming over both speech and gesture to argue that not only are the bodies
and gestures cognitive artifacts, but that they are, in fact, separate
cognitive artifacts because the gestures have existence, in these examples,
which outlasts their physical performance.
An argument Enfield continues in the next chapter (Chapter 7), on ‘Editing’,
is that the gesturers can return to the site of earlier gestures in order to
manipulate the diagrams as they were ‘drawn’. Enfield gives a limited typology
of the types of editing that gesturers perform (p. 220) and calls for further
research on the editing practices of gestures that interact with gestural
diagrams in this way.
EVALUATION
Enfield’s book positions itself as research on meaning, specifically, the
‘unification of meaning’, and he argues for understanding component signs
within interactional moves as parts of wholes which must taken together when
analyzing interaction. As such, “The Anatomy of Meaning” is an invaluable
resource for anyone working on how interactants create, maintain or change and
transmit meaning within interactions, whether these are face-to-face, heavily
gestural, or otherwise. However, given the book’s focus on the gestural, it
would potentially be helpful to readers of this research if videos of the
interactions analyzed were made available by the publishers, perhaps online,
to complement the transcriptions and images in the printed book.
Enfield’s book has obvious relevance for gesture studies as a whole; first,
because it argues for the importance of gesture in any interactional analysis,
and second, because of the specific types of gestures described and analyzed
across several chapters. The chapters on diagramming and editing hold
particular interest for researchers in cognition, whether it be from a social
or distributed perspective. The in-depth analysis of the previously-called
proximal/distal ‘nii4’ and ‘nan4’ system shows a fascinating insight into how
descriptive linguistics could use gesture to more accurately delve into the
meanings of various linguistic features in all languages.
Obviously, “The Anatomy of Meaning” gives significant insight into Lao
speakers’ cultural practices in its discussion of kinship and fishing
practices, and as such, would be of great relevance to anthropologists and
linguists working in that area. Its focus on kinship diagramming opens a line
of inquiry into the describing of kinship practices across linguistic (and
cultural) variation, which should be of interest to anyone studying kinship
terms, organization, and marriage practices, both within communities of Lao
speakers and cross-culturally.
Enfield’s book calls for further research on a number of points he raises
within his analysis and argumentation and this call needs to be answered from
researchers across semiotics and meaning, gesture studies, anthropology,
typology and descriptive linguistics, as well as those engaging in the study
of interaction and cognition.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Katharine Parton is a PhD candidate in the School of Languages & Linguistics
at the University of Melbourne. Her research examines interaction in
orchestral rehearsal, focussing on gesture. Her broader research interests
include epistemics, social cognition, gesture and social interaction.
Jul 20
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhbook review
EDITOR: Carol Berkenkotter
EDITOR: Vijay K. Bhatia
EDITOR: Maurizio Gotti
TITLE: Insights into Academic Genres
SERIES TITLE: Linguistic Insights – Volume 160
PUBLISHER: Peter Lang AG
YEAR: 2012
REVIEWER: Pejman Habibie, University of Western Ontario
SUMMARY
“Insights into Academic Genres” brings together selected papers originally
presented at the conference on “Genre Variation in English Academic
Communication: Emerging Trends and Disciplinary Insights” in Bergamo on 23-25
June 2011. The volume consists of twenty-one chapters that are grouped into
four thematic sections: “Theoretical Insights,” “Presenting Research
Insights,” “Reviewing and Popularizing Research Insights,” and “Insights into
Pedagogic Genres.” There is a “notes on contributors” part at the end of the
volume.
In the introduction chapter, Gotti, Berkenkotter, and Bhatia present an
overview of the concept of genre including the significance and status of
genre and genre analysis, recent perspectives in genre theory and genre
studies, and diversity of methodological tools for specialized genre analysis.
The final part of the chapter outlines a summary of the contents of this
volume.
The two chapters in Section One, “Theoretical Insights,” address the most
relevant and recent issues and innovations in various areas of research into
academic genres. In the first chapter of this section, “Genre change in the
digital age: Questions about dynamism, affordances, evolution,” Carol
Berkenkotter investigates genre variation in an emerging digital genre in
academic communication, namely the blog. She argues that different
perspectives on generic variation depend on the theorist’s conceptual
framework and disciplinary training. Affordances, uptake, dynamism, and stance
are proposed as the criteria for evaluating the generic status of online
blog-posts. The next part of the chapter reports an analysis of stance
markers in blog posts.
The second chapter in this section, “Interdiscursivity in academic genre,”
deals with interdiscursivity in two academic genres, the doctoral thesis and
the research article. Vijiay Bhatia highlights how research articles are
discursively constructed based on doctoral theses and how an understanding of
interdiscursivity sheds light on underlying communicative processes of these
genres. He suggests a critical approach to genre analysis, in which not only
text-internal, but also text-external factors as well as interdiscursivity are
taken into account. He argues that such an approach clarifies the challenges
that emerging writers encounter for submitting their research articles to
international journals.
The chapters in Section Two, “Presenting Research Insights,” address genres
that report research results such as the research article, the conference
presentation, and the Ph.D. dissertation. The paper “Value marking in an
academic genre: When authors signal goodness,” by David Giannoni, addresses
value marking in the research article. Giannoni focuses on the embededness of
values in the research article and their linguistic representations in this
academic genre. In this corpus-based study, a combination of qualitative and
quantitative procedures, concordance data, and manual investigation are
employed to analyze explicit goodness-marking lexis in a corpus of 100
research articles. The findings of this study indicate that “goodness” is more
common in social sciences due to the value-laden nature of these disciplines
The next chapter, “Such a reaction would spread all over the cell like a
forest fire: A corpus study of argument by analogy in scientific discourse,”
reports a study of argument by analogy conducted in a corpus linguistics
framework. In this chapter, Davide Mazzi analyzes the use of discursive
resources, indicating argument by analogy in a corpus of scientific discourse.
He adopts van Eemeren and Grootendorst’s (1992, p. 97) view of analogy as the
point of reference and uses a corpus of 140 authentic medico-scientific
research articles published in 14 specialized journals. The findings indicate
a high frequency of this technique the “Results” and “Discussion” sections and
highlight its significant status and argumentative and reinforcing functions
in discursive practices of medico-scientific writers.
The next chapter, “Exploring generic integrity and variation: Research
articles in two English-medium interactional applied economics journals,”
deals with generic integrity and variation in the research article. In this
genre-based research, Pilar Mur-Duenas focuses on intrageneric and
intradisciplinary variation in research articles published in English in two
international applied economics journals. The research aims to shed light on
discursive practices of scholars as they calibrate their writing conventions
according to different publication sites. The results highlight the
significance of the site of publication and its influence on writing for
scholarly publication practices of scholars.
In chapter six, “Generic integrity in jurisprudence and philosophy of law:
Metadiscursive strategies for expressing dissent within constraints of
collegiality,” William Bromwich examines generic integrity conventions in the
domain of jurisprudence and philosophy of law. Taking Bhatia’s genre-oriented
perspective (1993, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2007), he investigates how authors
working in competing frameworks draw on metadiscursive devices such as
evaluative lexis and markers to indicate their stance on different issues, and
challenge research findings of other members of their discourse communities on
the one hand, and avoid dialogic frictions, and observe collegiality codes
with their colleagues, on the other hand. The corpus includes the complete
series of papers published in the “International Journal of Jurisprudence and
Philosophy of Law” in 2009-2011.
Chapter seven, “The title of my paper is…: Introducing the topic in
conference presentations,” addresses topic introduction in conference
presentations. Francisco Javier Fernandez Polo argues that although topic
introduction is redundant at the beginning of a conference presentation, this
move still plays a significant part in conference presentations . Moreover,
the study aims to investigate the intertextual relationship between topic
announcement and the title slide and to shed light on the structure and
constituent linguistic features of this move. The corpus of the study includes
the introductory sections of 31 conference presentations in English.
Chapter eight, “Why do we have to write? : Practice-based theses in the visual
and performing arts and the place of writing,” deals with practice-based
theses in the fields of visual and performing arts. Drawing on data from
interviews, surveys, and institutional documentation and guidelines,
Starfield, Paltridge, and Ravielli adopt a textographical approach (Swales,
1998a, 1998b) to investigate the place of writing, and explore written
constituent components of practice-based doctorates in those fields.
Chapter nine, “A genre analysis of Japanese and English introductory chapters
of literature Ph.D. theses,” is part of a larger on-going genre study of the
doctoral dissertation. In this chapter, Masumi Ono investigates generic
structures in the thesis introductory chapters of Ph.D. dissertations in the
field of literature, comparing English and Japanese. Ninety-nine introductory
chapters of literature Ph.D. theses are analyzed. The results indicate
cross-cultural differences in number, frequency, and obligatory status of
constituent steps of this genre.
The chapters in Section Three, “Reviewing and Popularizing Research Insights,”
deal with genres that are not used for reporting innovative findings, but are
reviewed in academic discussions and disseminated among colleagues in the
academic community.
In chapter ten, “The move structure of academic theatre reviews,” Anna
Stermieri investigates the academic theater review. Drawing on Swales’ (1990)
and Bhatia’s (1993; 2004) theoretical models, she analyzes the schematic move
structure of this under-researched genre and examines various aspects of
diachronic variation over a period of a decade (1991-2001). The underlying
hypothesis of this study is that the conditions in which the critic operates
and any probable fluctuations in these conditions will influence the critics’
performance and consequently their writing practices. The corpus of this study
includes 67 academic theater reviews that appeared in six academic journals.
Chapter eleven, “The dissemination of scientific knowledge in academia,”
examines two related genres. Comparing research abstracts (as a formal
academic genre) and their derived science reports (as a popular mixed genre),
Susan Kermas looks at the differences between these genres and investigate the
role of redrafting strategies in the popularization of scientific and academic
knowledge. This study indicates how the interconnection between topic and
readership determines lexical and linguistic features in each of these genres.
In chapter twelve, “Blurred genres: Hybrid functions in the medical field,”
Isabel Herrando-Rodrigo contrasts medical research articles and their more
popularized counterparts — “Medical electronic popularizations” (or
“Med-E-Pops”) — in order to highlight the hybridization process between
these genres. Exploring the genre of Med-E-Pops, she emphasizes that
Med-E-Pops reflect their corresponding research articles. She argues that
Med-E-Pops writers knowingly adapt research articles into more popularized and
comprehensible texts in order to raise the reliability of their texts, promote
their research, and expand readership in cyberspace.
Chapter thirteen, “Comments in academic blogs as a new form of scholarly
interaction,” aims at studying how the interpersonal strategies in blog
comments compare to those in other academic and computer-mediated
communication genres. In this study, Maria Jose Luzon analyzes a corpus of
eleven academic blogs from different disciplines, focusing on markers of
social and antisocial behavior. The findings highlight the hybrid nature of
comments in academic blogs and underline their role in constructing both
social and antisocial relations.
In chapter fourteen, “Cross-cultural differences in the construal of authorial
voice in the genre of diploma theses,” Olga Dontcheva-Navratilova examines
cross-cultural variation in the construal of authorial voice in relation to
the generic structure of theses written by Czech and German students of
English. The main objective of the study is an analysis of novice non-native
speakers’ use of pronominal self-reference items and impersonal
“it-“constructions to project an authorial voice into their master’s theses
written in English.
In chapter fifteen, “Cross-cultural differences in the use of discourse
Markers by Czech and German students of English in the genre of master’s
theses,” Renata Povolna investigates variation between the ways in which
novice non-native writers from two different discourse communities have
adopted the appropriate use of causal and contrastive discourse markers when
building coherent relations in academic texts. The study uses a small sample
of about 352000 words taken from a large corpus of Master’s theses written by
students of English in their final year of study. The findings indicate
cross-cultural variation in use of causal and contrastive discourse markers
(especially hypotactic and paratactic ones) as well as idiosyncrasies in use
of certain markers.
The chapters in Section Four, “Insights into Pedagogic Genres,” investigate
those genres that are used for educational purposes at a university level. In
chapter sixteen, “Variation in students’ accounts of graphic data: Context and
cotext factors in a polytechnic setting,” Carmen Sancho-Guinda examines
commentaries written by engineering students, focusing on a number of
constructive, contextual, and cotextual factors of those discourses, and the
role of such factors in discoursal variation. A combination of Goffman’s
(1971) interaction orders, the definitions of voice by Blommaert (2005) and
Ede (1989), and Hyland’s (2005) model of writer stance and engagement
constitute the theoretical framework for the interpretation of the results of
this study. The findings highlight variation in visual data reports in terms
of the expression of positioning and indicate that engagement features
outnumber stance features considerably.
In chapter seventeen,” K (Contract) Case Briefs in American law schools: A
genre-based analysis,” Michela Giordano conducts a qualitative and
quantitative genre analysis of a corpus of contract case briefs, a common
genre for students in American law schools, submitted by law students to an
online contract case brief bank. This study adopts Bhatia’s (1993) four-move
analytical model. An interesting feature of this study is an examination of
abbreviations and symbols in order to gain insights into how these represent
rhetorical strategies the student adopts as a way of analyzing a particular
case opinion in a formulaic way, recording and summarizing the outcomes for
further research and classroom discussion.
Chapter eighteen, “Digital video projects in English for academic purposes:
Students’ and lecturers’ perceptions and issues raised,” reports a study
conducted by Christoph A. Hafner, Lindsay Miller, and Connie Ng Kwai-Fun in
the context of an EAP course in an English-medium university in Hong Kong.
This qualitative study aims to configure a pedagogical approach to academic
literacy, which incorporates new advancements in information and communication
technologies. Students create a digital video scientific documentary, a hybrid
genre in digital media that brings together digital literacy practices with
traditional approaches to disciplinary English for academic purposes.
Chapter nineteen, “Interactive whiteboards as enhancers of genre hybridization
in academic settings,” reports a study on the incorporation of information and
communication technology tools into academic contexts. Patrizia Anesa and
Daniela Iovino investigate how integration of these tools, such as interactive
whiteboards, into academic courses facilitates the combination of features
that are typically associated with different genres such as lectures,
seminars, and presentations, and consequently, contributes to academic genre
hybridization, as a key feature of academic discourse.
In chapter twenty, “Representation of events and event participants in
academic course descriptions,” Sara Gesuato investigates characteristics of
academic course descriptions English through a textual approach. This study
focuses on lexico-grammatical representations of courses, teachers and
students, and events as the main components of academic course descriptions.
The study’s objectives are to determine the visibility of those components in
the texts and to determine the functional status of the texts (informational,
regulatory, or both) based on the assertions made about those components. The
corpus of this study consists of 100 course descriptions from ten disciplines.
EVALUATION
The attraction of “Insights into Academic Genres” begins with the book’s
high-caliber editors, Carol Berkenkotter, Vijay K. Brattier, and Maurizio
Gotti. The selection of cutting-edge studies, thematic organization of the
chapters, and the way they dovetail with each other in each section are all
indicative of the comprehensive knowledge of the editors (see also
Berkenkotter, Huckin, & Ackerman, 1988). Their informed decisions and quality
editing make this volume more than a mere conference proceedings volume.
The volume presupposes knowledge of the concept of genre, and is addressed to
novice and established members of the discourse community that intend to know
what the state of the art of genre analysis is, and where future research
needs to focus on. It introduces new perspectives on the concept of genre and
genre analysis, focusing on new, (semi)-occluded, and emerging genres in
academia. The focus on a wide range of hot topics such as (sub)disciplinary,
cross-cultural variation, genre sets, generic integrity, hybridization and
popularization in combination with assorted methodological approaches make
this volume a must-read for those interested in genre.
Carol Berkenkotter’s chapter is one of the cornerstones of this volume. This
chapter puts forward interesting questions about conceptualization of genre
and generic variation in today’s digital context and draws attention to
importance and status of digital genres and internet-based discursive
practices. Stepping beyond traditional concepts of genre and genre analysis,
it also highlights the significance of further research into evolution of
“protean genres” such as wikis and blogs as a budding research area in today’s
research arena. Highlighting the theorist’s stance in conceptualization of
generic variation, this innovative chapter focuses on the blog as a rising
academic genre and operationalizes the concept of genre as a “recognition
category”.
Vijay Bhatia’s chapter presents a new and different perspective on research
article as one of the most-researched academic genres. In contrast to the bulk
of research on research articles, which is dedicated to the lexical and
rhetorical analysis of different sections of this genre and its evolution
overtime, this chapter focuses on the significance of “ management of
interdiscursive space” in genre analysis in general and between this genre and
doctoral theses in particular and challenges and complexities of novice
scholars for writing for scholarly publication. It highlights social-cultural
aspects and functions of genre rather than merely textual ones, draws
attention to underlying differences existent even in similar genres, and as
Bhatia argues, underlines the significance of a critical approach to genre
analysis. Considering the undeniable significance of scholarly publications in
global scholarship and “publish or perish” as one of the biggest challenges
for both established and novice academics, this chapter provides invaluable
insights for those interested in the research and pedagogy of writing for
scholarly publication.
Davide S. Giannoni’s chapter is noteworthy in two aspects. First, focusing on
an under-researched area in genre studies, this chapter deals with axiology of
academic discourse and linguistic manifestations and features of values
embedded in academic discourse. Second, from a methodological perspective,
this research uses a novel mixed-methods design combining quantitative
automatic and manual tools and techniques for identification of value-making
features in a written corpus of 100 research articles.
Francisco Javier Fernandez Polo’s chapter is the only chapter in this volume
that focuses on an oral genre namely, conference presentations. The
significance of oral genres in general and and conference presentations in
particular and their role in academic lives of scholars on the one hand and
the fact that genre studies have mainly focused written genres on the other
hand make this chapter a must-read.
Starfield, Paltridge, and Ravioli’s chapter is also one of the stronger
contributions in this volume. The research reported in their chapter is
noteworthy in terms of its methodological approach. In spite of the
traditional approach to genre analysis in which written discourse was the sole
source of data, this study adopts an investigative approach combining text
analysis and ethnographic methods to investigate a student-generated genre,
i.e., practice-based theses, in relatively new fields of visual and performing
arts. Attention to data triangulation through drawing on mixed data collection
methods such as survey, interview, and document analysis and longitudinal
nature of this study make the findings and implications of this research
particularly relevant.
Anna Stermieri’s pioneering research into the academic theater review is one
of the most interesting chapters of the third section of this volume. The
findings of this study are noteworthy as they highlight two interesting
features in this genre. At the macro-level, the results indicate a four-move
pattern in the rhetorical organization of this genre. At the micro-level, the
results reveal the double deixis of time and space as an interesting feature
in one of the constituent moves (the “Narrative move”).
Maria Jose Luzon’s research into academic blogs, as a genre of growing
popularity with academics, is also one of the must –reads in this volume.
Unlike most traditional genre studies, it focuses on an Internet-mediated
genre and on the hybrid nature of communication in a web-based social space.
Carmen Sancho-Guinda’s study is noteworthy in two respects. First, the study
examines graphic commentaries of visuals as a hybrid, unresearched genre in
applied linguistics. Second, the study adopts a mixed-methods approach
(combining discourse-based and corpus-informed methodology). The combination
of quantitative and qualitative methods and tools into innovative methods and
designs is an interesting feature of Giannoni’s, Mazzi’s, and Sancho-Guinda’s
studies as well.
Overall, this book is a very welcome addition to research on academic genres.
Any comments on what more could have been included or addressed seems
difficult, as the nature and focus of the papers presented at the conference,
and the editors’ subjective criteria for selection are not known. However,
based on the current content, the book could have done more justice to oral
academic genres and corpora as well as cross-cultural generic variation.
Moreover, an index at the end of the book would have added to the merits of
this volume.
Globalization and internationalization of academia require more in-depth
inquiry into student-produced genres, and cross-cultural, and contextual
factors that influence generic integrity and variation. Research also needs to
focus on (semi)occluded, and emerging disciplinary genres that students,
especially international ones, need to acquire for socialization purposes in
academia.
REFERENCES
Berkenkotter, C., Huckin, T. N., & Ackerman, J. (1988). Conventions,
conversations, and the writer: Case study of a student in a rhetoric Ph.D.
program. Research in the Teaching of English, 22(1), 9-44.
Bhatia, V. K. (1993). Analyzing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings.
London: Longman.
Bhatia, V. K. (2000). Generic View of Academic Discourse. In: J. Flowerdew
(Ed), Academic Discourse (pp. 21-39). London: Pearson.
Bhatia, V. K. (2002). Applied Genre Analysis: A Multi-perspective Model.
Iberia, 4, 3-19.
Bhatia, V. K. (2004). Worlds of Written Discourse: A Genre-based Approach.
London: Continuum.
Bhatia, V. K. (2007). Interdiscursivity in Critical Genre Analysis. Paper
given at the Fourth International Symposium on Genre Studies, Unusual, Brazil.
Blommaert, J. (2005). Discourse. A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Ede, L. S. (1989). Work in Progress: A Guide to Writing and Revising. New
York: St. Martin’s Press.
Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in Public. New York: Harper & Row.
Hyland, K. (2005). Stance and Engagement: A Model of Interaction in Academic
Discourse. Discourse Studies, 7(2), 173-192.
Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research
Settings. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press.
Swales, J. M. (1998a). Textography: Toward a Contextualization of Written
Academic Discourse. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 31(1),
109-121.
Swales, J. M. (1998b). Other Floors, Other Voices: A Textography of a Small
University Building. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Swales, J. M. (2004). Research Genres: Explorations and Applications. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Van Eemeren, F. H., & Grootendorst, R. (1992). Argumentation, Communication
and Fallacies. A Pragma-Dialectical Perspective. Hillsdale, N.J.; Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Pejman Habibie is the lead teacher assistant in the Faculty of Education at
The University of Western Ontario, Canada. His research interests are EAP,
academic writing and publishing, genre analysis, and doctoral education.
Jul 08
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhbook review
EDITOR: Claudia Holler
EDITOR: Martin Klepper
TITLE: Rethinking Narrative Identity
SUBTITLE: Persona and Perspective
SERIES TITLE: Studies in Narrative 17
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2013
REVIEWER: Damian J. Rivers, Osaka University
SUMMARY
As Volume 17 of the Studies in Narrative (SiN) series (edited by Michael
Bamberg), this book offers a multi-dimensional approach to the exploration and
understanding of narrative and the plethora of channels through which
conceptualizations of narrative and identity are intertwined. The ten chapters
within the volume originate from a diverse array of academic fields such as
literary theory, philosophy, gender studies, and history, thus tending to a
broad spectrum of potential reader interest. Within their own individual area
of specialization, the contributing authors each highlight the importance of
perspective and persona in the perception of and the possibilities existent in
the creation and interpretation of narrative identities.
The Introduction [Rethinking narrative identity: Persona and perspective], by
Martin Klepper, serves to announce the direction of the volume and the
multi-disciplinary parameters of the ten proceeding individual chapters by
providing “initial impulses” intended to “open up a dialogue with the
explorations that follow” (p. 4). The author draws upon an impressive body of
literature concerning, amongst other issues, the narrative understanding of
personal identities, with particular attention given to the work of the
philosopher, Paul Ricoeur (a significant presence throughout the volume).
Klepper describes the volume as a collection of ”essays by scholars from
various disciplines exploring to which extent and with which modifications the
notion of narrative identity is productive in their field of expertise” (p.
4). These ten chapters are positioned as being situated within the rapidly
transforming lifeworlds of the twenty-first century and this analogy
accurately captures the sense of dynamism present throughout the volume.
Important in focusing the expectations of the reader is the author’s
acknowledgement that ”the resulting mosaic is not a neat, homogenous one”
(p. 4). On the whole, the Introduction offers an exciting variety of
insightful perspectives on narrative identity and primes the reader for what
follows.
Chapter 1 [Identity and empathy: On the correlation of narrativity and
morality], by Norbert Meuter (translated by B. Greenhill, C Himmelreich, C.
Holler and M. Klepper), converges specifically upon the question of ethics in
narrative from a philosophical perspective. The author’s main thesis is that
”[m]oral experience and acting are fundamentally based on processes of
identity and empathy formation, and narratives enable, create, stabilize and
energize both identity and empathy” (p. 33). The chapter is divided into
three thematic sections, each featuring numerous sub-sections dealing with
narrativity, morality, and the correlation between these two terms. In making
reference to the “double structure that represents the central touchstone of
narrative ethics”, the author surmises that ”[e]mpathy and identity are two
sides of one (moral) cause. Self and Other are two values that cannot be
pitted against one another” (p. 46).
Chapter 2 [Axes of identity: Persona, perspective, and the meaning of (Keith
Richards’s) life], by Mark Freeman, takes the self-identity work of William
James as a foundation and looks at two interrelated axes of identity,
identified in the author’s previous work as time and relatedness to the Other.
Through the use of Keith Richards’s memoir ‘Life’, the author illustrates and
explores the processes involved in negotiating one’s own and others’
perspectives on the self. Underscored by questions of ”[w]hy should we care
so much about Keith Richards? Why should we care so much that we are willing
to read through nearly 600 pages of his life?” (p. 55), the author presents a
number of interesting extracts from the memoir and analyzes them in relation
to various threads of narrative identity such as persona, the duality of human
nature, and authenticity.
Chapter 3 [The quest for a third space: Heterotopic self-positioning and
narrative identity], by Wolfgang Kraus, concerns issues of belonging and the
question of ”Who am I part of?” found within narrative approaches to
identity construction as well as the more commonly asked question of ”Who am
I in time” (p. 69). Related to issues of (intentional) self-positioning and
other-positioning, the author ponders on how it is possible for individuals to
”maintain the dynamics of self-positioning in self-stories, which are largely
shaped by the experience of social exclusion” (p. 69). Interview excerpts are
shared and serve as a platform for an in-depth discussion in which the author
asks ”[h]ow do people deal with the experience of stereotyping, which keeps
them fixed in a position of being ‘othered’…?” (p. 75). The idea of a third
space is then analyzed, along with the issue of heterotopias and
self-positioning, heterotopias as choice and construction, the narration of
heterotopic experiences, and heterotopic positioning as ‘work on the
impossible’. The author concludes by noting that a primary challenge for
future research is to ”look for the hardly sayable, the small blades of grass
between the rigidity of dominant, superficially well-defined and seemingly
unchangeable binary tales” (p. 82).
Chapter 4 [Constructing perspectives as positioning resources in stories of
the self], by Gabriele Lucius-Hoene, examines the role of perspectivation in
personal storytelling and the negotiation of moral claims through which the
”almighty author” is able ”to gain authentication and persuasive power
while refraining from explicit evaluations” (p. 85). With a ”twist [which]
namely complicates the stories they tell about their lives and their problems
in interview setting” (p. 87), the author cites two stories taken from
narrative interviews with sufferers of severe chronic illness. The author
shares the two conversation transcriptions and gives a thorough analysis of
each, highlighting the rhetorical devices used, in addition to providing a
broad sociolinguistic interpretation. The author concludes that both narrators
”show a strong tendency for interactive orientation; also, they exploit their
stories for the purpose of entertaining the listener by using a variety of
stylistic means” (p. 99).
Chapter 5 [Referential frameworks and focalization in a craft artist’s life
story: A socionarratological perspective on narrative identity], by Jarmila
Mildorf, explores “the roles perspective can play in conversational
storytelling…and to what extent literary narratology can offer useful terms to
describe perspective-taking in such contexts” (p. 103). Utilizing a detailed
life interview with a craft artist (Dominic Di Mare), the author emphasizes
instances of focalization and how the artist positions himself during the
interview and in his narrative, as well as how the artist offers invitation to
the interviewer (Signe Mayfield) to partially adopt his position. The
mid-sections of the chapter discuss previous narrative studies, present an
outline of what David Herman terms as socionarratology, and offer an
examination of the term focalization. The author then shares an analysis of
the interview before concluding that much can be gained from “combining
linguistic narrative analysis with narratological concepts” (p. 113).
Chapter 6 [Strange perspectives = strange (narrative?) identities?], by
Rüdiger Heinze, asks ”[i]f our understanding of fictional narratives is based
on real-world experiential cognitive parameters, how do we deal with texts
that cannot be fully grasped in accordance with these parameters, and what
effects do these ‘unnatural’ texts have on everyday storytelling” (p. 117).
The author uses Galen Strawson’s argument against narrative identity as a
starting point and gives specific attention to ”’strange’ and ‘unnatural’
narrative perspectives” (p. 119) that extend beyond the common genre of
autobiography. The author provides ample background literature and
rationalizes the main argument through reference to five clearly stated
assumptions. The chapter then draws upon Rick Moody’s novel, ‘The Ice Storm’,
and his (very) short story, ‘The Grid’, to demonstrate what happens ”to
narrative identity and perspective if we take unnatural narratives with
impossible perspectives seriously” (p. 123). The author closes the chapter by
highlighting how such examples offer a ”conception of narrative identity and
perspective that [does] justice to our often very weird lives” (p. 126).
Chapter 7 [”Indefinite, sketchy, but not entirely obliterated”: Narrative
identity in Jeffrey Eugenides’s ‘Middlesex’], by Nicole Frey Büchel, analyzes
the narrated identity experiences and selfhood construction of the intersexual
narrator and protagonist (Calliope Stephanides) within ‘Middlesex’. From a
mainly post-structuralist perspective and based on the belief that narratives
are forced to communicate with pre-existing texts, the author suggests that
consequently ”narratives are revealed to be incapable of providing a definite
selfhood” and that ‘Middlesex’ ”reformulates the concept of narrative
identity in terms of constant, ultimately open-ended performance” (p. 130).
Making extensive use of supporting footnotes, the chapter provides a detailed
literary analysis of the narrated experiences of the protagonist and the
subsequent implications for selfhood and identity. The author concludes by
asserting how “the very ruptures in Cal’s narrative identity are the features
that ultimately come to define his individual and unique self” (p. 145).
Chapter 8 [Creative confession: Self-writing, forgiveness and ethics in Ian
McEwan’s ‘Atonement’], by Kim L. Worthington, explores issues surrounding
truth and self-forgiveness in the act of the self-authorizing confession, and
the ethical considerations raised as a consequence. With emphasis on Ian
McEwan’s ‘Atonement’, and the protagonist Briony Tallis, the author argues
that the novel ”points up the impossibility of attaining either truth or
self-forgiveness via acts of (confessional) self-writing” (p. 148). The first
part of the chapter provides a thematic discussion of the parameters of the
act of confession and draws upon the work of scholars such as Peter Brooks,
Michel Foucault and J.M. Coetzee. The proceeding sections of the chapter
provide detailed critical analyses of the novel from a number of comparative
perspectives, whilst retaining a clear focus on the act of confession and the
implications created for narrative identity.
Chapter 9 [The queer self and the snares of heteronormativity: Quentin Crisp’s
life story – A successful failure], by Eveline Kilian, investigates the
autobiographical life writings of Quentin Crisp in ‘The Naked Civil Servant’.
With implications for autobiographical structure and queer conceptualizations
of time, Quentin Crisp is cast as one of ”heteronormativity’s marginalized
others” (p. 171) who are required to manage a quite paradoxical existence.
The significance of ‘The Naked Civil Servant’ and the fascinating
autobiographical identities portrayed by Quentin Crisp are situated within the
chapter as being demonstrative of ”the self-fashioning of a queer subject who
defies hegemonic gender norms and counters society’s undisguised hostility and
ostracism by squarely inhabiting the position of the abject attributed to
him” (p. 172). Throughout the chapter, a detailed analysis is offered
concerning the manner in which Quentin Crisp, through the unconditional
acceptance of a lifestyle deemed to be failure by society, is able to
ultimately achieve success and ”beat the system at its own game” (p. 183)
without conforming to the norms of heteronormativity.
Chapter 10 [Confessional poetry: A poetic perspective on narrative identity],
by Eva Brunner, shares a broad literary exploration of identity construction
within lyrical texts (three Anne Sexton poems) and deals with issues such as
different self-concepts, the possibility of multiple selves, permanent
self-actualization through narrative, conventional narratological frames, and
the relationship between identity and emotion. The author offers a detailed
introduction of narrative identity and narratological frames, citing scholars
from philosophy, literature, and psychology in order to highlight different
conceptualizations of narrative. The focus of the chapter then turns toward
confessional poetry that is ”situated in a transitional space between
modernism and postmodernism” (p. 191) and an analysis of three of Anne
Sexton’s poems. In concluding, the author draws attention to how the
”self-presentations in these poems are concerned with emotional states rather
than with sequences of events, although these aspects often overlap” (p.
200). This position underpins the author’s call for greater attention to be
given to ”the emotional aspects of identity” (p. 201).
EVALUATION
In casting the narration of the self as a process never fully achieving a
“final configuration”, co-editor of the volume Martin Klepper asserts how “the
need for coherence and unity must be seen in a paradoxical relation to the
tendency towards contingency and diffusion”, and this is suggested as the
“homology that ultimately brings narrative and identity together” (p. 28).
This observation can be positioned as a metaphor for the volume as a whole.
Indeed, one of the most attractive features of the volume is the richness and
diversity of the perspectives expressed throughout each chapter, in addition
to the variety of approaches taken by each of the respective authors. In
producing a volume that demonstrates collective freedom from the potential
confines of one particular discipline, the notions of narrative and identity
are comprehensively brought together through a refreshing collage of
expression and vitality. Each chapter presents the reader with a substantive
exploration of narrative identity without undue repetition. The specific
characteristics of each chapter and the different academic fields from which
the authors originate ensure that this volume offers the reader an invitation
and access to information that might well inspire new directions of
exploration.
In situating this rather sophisticated volume alongside other books, it is
liberating to see that the most general topic of investigation (narrative
identity) is given clear precedence over the academic field through which it
is observed and, much in the same manner as the paradox noted in the paragraph
above, this structure has the somewhat unexpected effect of producing a
coherent and cohesive collection of chapters. The editors have clearly
achieved the stated goal of “present[ing] essays by scholars from various
disciplines exploring to which extent and with which modification the notion
of narrative identity is productive in their field of expertise” (p. 4). The
approach taken by the editors should be commended, as all too often the
individual chapters within such edited volumes are unified as much by the
field from which they originate as they are by the general theme of the
volume. In this respect, and through the pleasurable experience of reading the
book, it would seem productive to have more volumes published that embrace a
multi-disciplinary approach toward a particular notion as a means of providing
the reader with a more comprehensive account. The multi-disciplinary nature of
this volume also serves to broaden the potential target audience. In offering
numerous pathways to the study and understanding of narrative identity, one
could expect that readers of this book will be primarily brought together via
a shared interest in narrative identity, as opposed to a primary interest in
linguistics, psychology or any of the other academic fields presented within
this volume. For example, having read numerous other volumes on narrative
identity from a sociological background (e.g. Holstein and Gubrium, 2000),
this volume has stimulated a desire to further explore the psychological work
of Wolfgang Kraus (author of Chapter Three) and the identity literature of
Quentin Crisp (featured in Chapter Nine).
Whilst certainly appealing to a wide audience, one might suggest that this
volume is not entirely suitable for students (particularly undergraduates) or
casual readers in narrative identity, unless the reader is willing to invest a
significant amount of time into the volume. Many of the chapters are complex
and make extended reference to rather heavy philosophical works. As a result,
the material can at times seem quite demanding. Despite this rather minor
observation, as a teacher-researcher with an interest in narrative identity,
this volume will certainly serve as a frequent source of direct and indirect
reference for a number of related projects. The diversity shown within the
study and the understanding of narrative identity throughout the volume are
undeniably impressive. Other readers across multiple fields of study will also
find the volume to be a rewarding experience; one that, if given sufficient
investment, will lead to a rethinking of narrative identity.
REFERENCES
Holstein, J.A. and Gubrium, J.F. (2000). The self we live by: Narrative
identity in a postmodern world. New York: Oxford University Press.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Damian J. Rivers is an Associate Professor at Osaka University in the English
Department, Graduate School of Language and Culture and holds a Ph.D in
Applied Linguistics from the University of Leicester, England. His main
research interests concern the management of multiple identities in relation
to otherness, the impact of national identities upon a variety of foreign
language education processes, critical issues in intercultural communication,
and social processes underpinning intergroup stereotypes. He is co-editor of
‘Native-Speakerism in Japan: Intergroup Dynamics in Foreign Language
Education’ (2013, Multilingual Matters) and ‘Social Identities and Multiple
Selves in Foreign Language Education’ (2013, Bloomsbury) (www.djrivers.com).
Jul 08
ThE CLOwNbook review
EDITOR: Sandra Campagna
EDITOR: Giuliana Garzone
EDITOR: Cornelia Ilie
EDITOR: Elizabeth Rowley-Jolivet
TITLE: Evolving Genres in Web-mediated Communication
SERIES TITLE: Linguistic Insights – Volume 140
PUBLISHER: Peter Lang AG
YEAR: 2012
REVIEWER: Andrea Lypka, University of South Florida
SUMMARY
‘Evolving Genres in Web-mediated Communication,’ edited by Sandra Campagna,
Giuliana Garzone, Cornelia Ilie, and Elizabeth Rowley-Jolivet, explores the
dynamic nature of web-mediated communication (WMC) that catalyzes electronic
discursive practices of various discourse communities. In the introduction,
the editors challenge traditional genre theory and argue that the hypertextual
and multimodal features of the web call for the re-examination of WMC through
alternative genre theories and analytical tools. As a result, this collection
becomes important because it examines web genres through the lens of
multimodality (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006), critical discourse analysis, and
participatory agenda.
In this edited collection of papers, the authors examine the connection
between traditional print genres and emerging online genres in multiple
communities from an interdisciplinary international research perspective. This
volume of 13 case studies explores the migration from print to web of various
genres and the emergence of alternative web genres that mirrors evolving
digital technological affordances in various discourse communities, including
corporations, health care, academia, media, government, and non-governmental
organizations (NGOs). For researchers interested in the latest trends in genre
evolution and technological advances, linguists looking for new types of
online language, educators and students concerned with pedagogical values, and
corporations interested in the commercial implications of virtual worlds,
these studies provide theoretical frameworks and practical insights to
integrate WMC in communication. Furthermore, these studies attempt to offer
theoretical and practical insights on WMC as a dynamic and strategic resource
for self-promotion, research, and pedagogy.
The collection is organized according to the chronological progression of the
web, starting with traditional, static websites, and moving to newer, more
participatory venues such as newsgroups, blogs, wikis, and microblogs. The
book is divided into three sections; the four chapters in the first section
address WMC from the perspectives of more traditional genres, including
websites, e-brochures, and argumentative web campaigns. The four chapters in
the second section explore the development of participatory genres, including
online laboratory protocols, wikis, memes, and newsgroups. The final five
chapters, in section three, focus on readers’ comments, academic weblogs, and
corporate twittering as specific genres that alter possibilities for
advertisers and other interested users.
The first section opens with Paola Catenaccio’s theoretical and empirical
analysis of selected structural aspects and the dynamic interconnection of web
genres of traditional corporate websites through the lens of system science.
In contrast to the classic definition of the website as a medium, Catenaccio
defines it as a “rhetorical interface” (p. 40), where textual and visual
information might not be hierarchically organized, but where different genres
are interconnected. The author describes this rhetorical interface through the
analysis of the Siemens corporate website, where traditional and web genres
mesh, and users can become content creators. On the Siemens website, new
genres and traditional genres are interconnected because they tackle the same
topic and share the same hyperlinks, but remain controlled by the corporation.
For example, a cultural event, sponsored by the company featured on the
homepage, contains a web-streaming option of the event as well as links to pdf
documents for festival supporters, the company’s involvement in the festival,
and the official festival’s site. However, this form of social communication
and creation of content on the Siemens website is connected to institutional
interests, having a primarily self-promotional purpose.
Furthermore, from the genre analysis and critical discourse analysis
perspectives, Alessandra Vicentini investigates particular genre features in
Italian institutional healthcare pdf e-brochures for immigrants. Results of
the study reveal a shift to one single multilingual educational/informative
e-brochure characterized by oversimplified language and content compared to
paper-based healthcare brochures for immigrants. Despite the lack of
hypertextual elements in the multilingual pdf e-brochures, the informative and
educational values for the target audience (i.e. immigrants) become central
because visuals, such as graphics, images, pictures, and diagrams are
interchangeable with textual messages. Visual messages become “the main
semiotic code through which the message is conveyed” (p. 66), while textual
messages become shorter and simpler through the use of slogans, such as “we
are with you” (p. 70), contraction, and enumeration.
The case study of the Chinese government’s website by Bettina Mottura surveys
how governmental organizations exploit WMC to convey messages and collect
information from the public. The analysis of three online interviews with the
Prime Minister reveals that even when the genre shift is more pronounced
online, characteristics of traditional genres seem to coexist with emerging
genres. The author concludes that the symbiosis between bureaucratic and
journalistic genres, such as online interviews, aligns with top-down
communication flow and reinforces the legitimacy of the government because
these interviews are orchestrated by government officials and the journalists
and public are not interactive participants in these interviews. For example,
email addresses posted on the government website are not always hotlinked to
an actual email address, and the journalists who conduct the online interviews
with the Prime Minister only introduce the questions or topics. The public has
little to no license for interactive feedback during the online interviews;
therefore, views that might run contrary to the government’s agenda remain
underexposed. Mottura’s study highlights that WMC is a powerful tool to
promote political agenda and control information flow.
Using Swales’ three-level model of genre (1990) and the reading and navigating
modes (Askehave & Ellerup Nielsen, 2005), Chiara Degano’s case study analyzes
the effectiveness of online argumentative discourses of two NGO campaigns, the
‘Baby Milk Action,’ campaign geared against the marketing of infant formula,
and Greenpeace’s campaign against genetically modified food. The author
concludes that the lack of adequate textual scaffolding in the ‘Baby Milk
Action’ campaign hinders the effectiveness of these argumentative genres for
the audience because of the excess of information, and a shift from
argumentative to subjective narration style. On the other hand, Greenpeace’s
campaign exemplifies a more coherent argumentative discourse. Hierarchical
organization patterns included a general statement on the homepage, while more
specific explanations were provided through links.
Studies included in the second section frame digital communication as distinct
from face-to-face communication because Web 2.0 is an environment for
community building and cooperative information dissemination. These discourse
communities, including scientific communities, Wikipedia, social networking
sites, and newsgroups, are sometimes established ad-hoc, and in time, members
develop practices and language to engage and legitimize members in that
particular community (Kramsch, 2010). Since these web genres continue to
evolve, it remains to be seen what characteristics of traditional genre will
be incorporated in the web genre.
For instance, Elizabeth Rowley-Jolivet analyzes the repurposing of
conventional scientific genres of laboratory protocols to the web, positing
that the affordances of the online medium that include options for public raw
data sharing and information dissemination, mutability, and multimodality,
create a unique informal environment for learning and collaboration. The
content analysis of the ‘Open WetWare’ website reveals that, in contrast to
print research protocols characterized by conventional, impersonal language,
web-mediated experimental procedures are characterized by informal, personal
language style (e.g. the use of the personal pronouns “I, me, my” and “we,”
spoken discourse markers “actually, now, well, so,” and capitalization to
indicate stress, such as in “HORRIBLE optics” (p. 146)). The informal learning
environment and the collective decisions to edit, remove or not remove a
protocol from the website create a sense of community and collaboration among
researchers and the public. Furthermore, through “legitimate peripheral
participation” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 29), this environment engages
apprentices, such as fledgling researchers, to participate in knowledge
co-construction and acquire research skills to become practitioners and
legitimized participants in that community.
Though these virtual spaces are personal and dynamic, they do not remain
completely egalitarian. Specifically, within Bakhtin’s (1981) notions of the
tensions between the centrifugal and centripetal forces of discourses,
Maristella Gatto investigates the reader-author-editor relationship,
collaborative writing practices, as well as patterns of interaction and
meaning-making in entries, by contrasting earlier and later stages of entries
posted on the cooperative online encyclopedia, ‘Wikipedia.’ One example of the
centrifugal force is the textual manipulation of the entry for “Montezuma,”
where one user commented that “the article is written like a travel guide,” a
different genre from the encyclopedia entry, while official editorial
revisions would be an example of centripetal forces. The analysis of a sample
of ‘Wikipedia’ entries reveals that on the ‘Wikipedia’ page, reader, author,
and editor coexist; however, such online collaborative practices are
legitimized by peer and editorial review and a style manual regarding their
adherence to generic expectations.
In addition to collaborative spaces, a community may be developed through
fluid user-generated online verbal and nonverbal symbolic forms, like Internet
memes, which can be a hyperlink, an unusual picture, or an intentional
misspelling of a phrase or word that might mean an ironic message. Enrico
Grazzi focuses on the pedagogical implications of using social networking,
such as blogs, message boards, discussion groups, and memes in English
language teaching and learning in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL)
setting. Using Wenger’s community of practice framework (1998), which
considers the social aspects of learning integrated in the concepts of
participation, practice, and identity in a professional community, the author
suggests that English teachers should integrate memes in their foreign
language curriculum to expose non-native speaker learners to alternative forms
of learning and the authentic use of EFL and to empower learners to actively
participate in a wider online community.
Elisa Corino and Cristina Onesti focus on agreement and disagreement
strategies and discourse development in a newsgroup. In this online
environment, users express their opinion and back up their arguments; their
interactions are subjected to Netiquette and informal rules of the discourse
community. Specifically, based on a sample taken from a subset of the NUNC
(NewsgroupUseNet Corpora) suite of multilingual corpora, the authors analyze
pragmatic and textual characteristics of interactions, levels of agreement and
disagreement (including partial and total agreement and total disagreement),
and quoting mechanisms for textual coherence in online discourses. Their study
finds that users adopted different agreement and disagreement strategies while
interacting online, and that quoting became pivotal not just for textual
coherence, but also as a strategy for users to avoid face threatening
interactions. Specifically, in disagreement and agreement discourses,
newsgroup users preferred to adopt less face threatening language by using
‘would’ and other conditional forms, as well as connectives, such as ‘but’ and
‘however,’ emoticons and ‘if’ clauses as delay devices, and quoting.
Studies included in the third section build on the social nature of Web 2.0.,
conceptualizing readers’ online comments on news, academic weblogs, corporate
blogs, and microblogs as popular participatory social media genres. These
online interactions are characterized by hybridized informal genres and the
creation of a new language in different modalities, with the goal being to
create, manipulate, document, and synthesize information, as well as to learn
and reflect.
Within the wider phenomenon of genre migration, Giuliana Garzone defines
weblogs as being native to the web, along with emails, websites, Facebook, and
having the following characteristics: entries organized in chronological
order, frequent updates, and links to other websites. Through the case studies
of the news blog ‘The Huffington Post’ and the corporate blog of Kodak’s, the
author defines blog as a macrogenre that hybridizes informal diary and formal
journalistic genres into emergent context- and purpose-dependent communicative
formats, featuring short posts and Internet initialisms, including laugh out
loud (LOL), that align with the institutions’ agendas. Specifically, the
analysis of editorials in ‘The Huffington Post,’ an online news outlet,
reveals that online stories align with the inverted pyramid style reporting in
print news. Furthermore, perhaps because these stories are published on a more
interactive and dynamic platform, and include visuals and hyperlinks, these
online stories attract more viewers and comments compared to news reports in
newspapers. Similarly, the blogs managed by the company Kodak also take
advantage of the interactive, individualistic properties of blogging for
advertising and marketing purposes.
However, these seemingly free-form practices, including participatory
journalism, are governed by external factors like style guides and editorial
boards. Specifically, Sandra Campagna’s analysis of linguistic and stylistic
features of readers’ online comments on ‘The Economist’ article on ‘Banning
the Burqua’ suggests that contributors’ comments on news editorials are
conditioned by editors’ newsworthiness criteria, communicative and rhetorical
styles, and editorial norms. Specifically, in this controlled forum, readers’
brief comments include citations and the development of counter-arguments
regarding the editorial. For example, an author named Res Publica quotes
Voltaire in his or her counter-editorial comment: “As Voltaire might have
said, “I disapprove of your dress, but I will defend to the death your right
to wear it” (p. 259). Other readers, like mdoaleh, include personal stories as
his or her counter-argument: “The issue of banning the Burqa is most
hypocritical. My daughter one time decided freely to don the Hijab during her
first year in university. The second year she took it off and donned a diamond
nose stud” (p. 259).These commenters’ communication strategies align with the
mixing of informal and formal registers used by the editor, bringing to light
the generic integrity of readers’ comments.
Furthermore, the participatory nature of social media may also empower
bloggers to construct an online identity (Lam, 2000). Malgorzata Sokol’s study
conceptualizes academic weblogs, more popularly known as blogs, as spaces for
information dissemination and publication, as well as for scholar-bloggers’
identity negotiation in academia. Using linguistic analysis and Hyland’s model
of metadiscourse (2005), Sokol investigates authoring strategies, in
particular, academic bloggers’ professional identity legitimization through
the use of self-mention, self-promotion, and citation on English blogs of
humanities scholars. The analysis of the blog entries reveals the prevalence
of using the personal pronoun “I” versus “we,” as well as self-reference
expressed through multimodal discourses, through the use of visuals, such as
PowerPoint presentations, links to word documents on conference presentations,
and hypertextual links to references, to establish authorship. This study
reconfirms that academic blogs might strengthen bloggers’ academic identities
because they are platforms for self-publishing, and they adhere to scholarly
norms and norms established by the blogger community.
The authors in the last two studies, in section three, argue that the genre of
microblogging, featuring real-time exchanges and updates characterized by
short sentences, individual images, or video links, take the user experience
to the next level. These studies focus on Twitter as a viable and effective
marketing and branding genre that complements traditional advertising genres
because short, real-time informal updates engage consumers in discourse that
is relevant to the content creator. For example, Giorgia Riboni’s study
examines the potential of corporate promotional tweets to recruit prospective
customers from an imaginary global audience. Using Goffman’s (1981) concepts
of animator, author, and principal, through the case study of the Twitter
profile of ‘Whole Foods Market,’ the author analyzes communication and
participation strategies in corporate tweets, replies, and retweets. The
results suggest that most tweets employ informal language and are used as a
promotional tool, while replies are mainly used for customer care. The
persuasive power of retweets has been a challenge because of the difficulty to
identify the author of retweets.
In a similar vein, Maria Christina Paganoni posits that the technological
advances and the features of social media, including multimodality and
interactivity, transform approaches to advertising and branding. When several
(micro)blogging genres, such as blogs and tweets, are integrated on a
corporate website, they seem to enhance the corporate aim “to promote a
holistic perception of the product as a choice of lifestyle obtained through
faithful consumption” (p. 324). For example, the blogpost on the ‘Coca-Cola
Conversations’ blog on the corporate website about the 1936 China Paper
Poster, known as Chinatown because it was designed for the Asian audience in
the US, can be defined as informational, entertaining, and promotional.
Paganoni’s case study of the company website and the branding potential of
official tweets of the ‘Coca-Cola Company’ concludes that social networks are
different from traditional marketing tools because they allow for meaningful
community building between content creator and consumer.
The findings of the last two studies on the web-mediated promotional genre of
corporate tweets enhance our insights of the persuasive power of the social
media platform, Twitter. Even though Twitter might be destined to play a key
role in corporate communication, analyzing and unpacking the promotional genre
of corporate tweets seems to be a challenge because of the emerging nature of
Twitter and the lack of research in this field.
EVALUATION
Recent technological advances have irrevocably altered communication
practices, allowing for faster and more responsive communication. The
synchronous nature of WMC allows for knowledge co-construction and information
dissemination among experts and non-experts in real time; this communication
is dynamic, live, and ongoing, thus blurring the boundaries between real and
virtual worlds. The characteristics of WMC, such as hypertextuality,
non-linearity, and multimodality, raise questions about the emergence of a
virtual self, issues of authorship, boundaries, ethics, privacy, and web genre
development through hybridization of text, image, audio, and video.
The strength of the studies in this volume lies in the thorough
contextualization of digital genre development as a dynamic and complex system
and the web as a medium where virtual world and reality collide (Kramsch,
2010). In this online world, digital genres expand upon traditional print
genres, evolving into meaningful and dynamic social practices that have yet to
be contextualized. However, their flexibility in format and language and their
permanence stimulate knowledge co-construction between expert and non-expert
users, as well as the construction of the self in dialogue with others. Even
though studies suggest that emerging genres seem to challenge existing norms
and practices in professional communities, the authors of the above-mentioned
studies suggest that evolving nature of web genres as well as web genres’
coexistence with traditional genres might suggest a deeper transformation in
communication practices.
The analysis of the relationship between traditional genres and newer web
genres are contextualized in each study from a sociocultural stance.
Technology-driven changes revolutionize the migration of traditional genres to
the web and open opportunities for collaborative information dissemination.
Communication in professional communities needs to be reframed in this
hypertextual environment, where text, still images, video, and audio coexist,
and where technological affordances act as catalyzers in emerging genres.
Arguably, as the editors and authors suggest, these existing analytical tools
and theories also need to be fine-tuned, and new analytical tools are needed
to properly define and analyze emerging online genres.
Overall, a thorough discussion on theoretical frameworks and literature
reviews characterize studies on more established genres, like websites and
blogs. For instance, Giuliana Garzone eloquently showcases the concepts of
web-genre migration and the genesis of blogging through the case studies of
‘Huffington Post’ and three Kodak’s blogs, ‘Grow Your Biz,’ ‘Plugged In,’ and
‘A Thousand Words’, and Bettina Mottura effectively contextualizes the WMC
between the Chinese government and the public through the analysis of the
government website and online interviews with the Prime Minister. Enrico
Grazzi’s study stands out from the other studies because it ambitiously
proposes to tackle the pedagogical implications of using social networking
sites and memes in an EFL setting from the teacher’s perspective. While the
author provides insights to second language acquisition theories and models,
such as communities of practice (Wenger, 1998), Sociocultural Theory and the
Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky, 1962), and highlights concepts, such
as digital identity, NNS, and cross-cultural communication, the links between
theories and concepts could be more detailed. Furthermore, perhaps because of
the lack of research on memes and the author’s ongoing research at the time of
the publication, the author does not provide an analysis of contemporary
relevant studies that focus on this phenomenon. In some studies, a thorough
presentation of the research methods, including study design, instruments,
data collection procedures, and interpretation of results, as well as a
discussion of practical implications in light of the conducted study would
increase the replicability of the study and would be invaluable for both
researchers and English teachers interested in using social media in their
English language classes.
Furthermore, in-depth discussions on relevant studies are missing, especially
in the studies on Twitter, perhaps because this platform is still emerging and
there is not an abundance of research in this area. While this book reviews
theories and literature on WMC in detail, the methodology sections in most
studies fail to provide much in-depth discussion on study design. For example,
in the article by Sokol, theory and literature take up four pages, and the
analysis takes up six pages, while the methodology is only briefly mentioned.
The lack of methodological rigor, perhaps because of limited space, makes
these studies harder to replicate. Even though these works lack methodological
rigor, they still provide theoretical frameworks and practical insights on
genre evolution and technological advances.
Overall, the chapters offer descriptive examples to highlight the interactive
and participatory nature of WMC and the effects of digital literacy and
interactive online communication. While most studies showcase how corporations
and governments exploit WMC to legitimize their power and agenda, few studies
explore how grassroots organizations and citizens form online communities.
Furthermore, with technological advances, more research should address the
effects of social media on society (i.e. privacy and copyright). Further
studies should focus on the newest trends in WMC, such as ‘Pinterest,’
‘Instagram,’ and ‘Google +,’ in different sociocultural contexts. Similarly,
such studies should provide practical implications on how these online
platforms, including gaming platforms and virtual worlds like ‘Second Life,’
might influence impact society and culture.
REFERENCES
Askehave I., Ellerup Nielsen, A. (2005). Digital genres: A challenge to
traditional genre theory. Information Technology and People, 18(2), 120-141.
Bakhtin, M. M. M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (No. 1).
Austin: University of Texas Press.
Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press.
Hyland, K. (Ed.). (2005). Metadiscourse: Exploring Interaction in Writing.
Continuum International Publishing Group.
Kramsch, C. (2010). The Multilingual Subject. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading Images. The Grammar or Visual
Design. London: Routledge.
Lam, W. S. E. (2000). L2 literacy and the design of the self: A case study of
a teenager writing on the Internet. TESOL Quarterly, 34(3), 457-482.
Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral
Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings.
Cambridge University Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Mental
Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Andrea Lypka is a second year PhD student in the Second Language Acquisition
and Instructional Technology (SLA/IT) program at the University of South
Florida(USF). Her research interests include identity, multimodality, and
individual learning differences.
Jul 08
ThE CLOwNbook review
EDITOR: Lawrence N. Berlin
EDITOR: Anita Fetzer
TITLE: Dialogue in Politics
SERIES TITLE: Dialogue Studies 18
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2012
REVIEWER: James Murphy, University of Manchester
INTRODUCTION
The book under review considers dialogue in politics as existing on a
continuum — with one end where participants are able to contribute to the
dialogic action freely and collaboratively, to the other where participants
are restricted to participating in the dialogue in strictly pre-defined ways.
The individual chapters in the volume highlight case studies at different
points on the continuum, from a variety of political traditions, media, and
using different theoretical approaches, including but not limited to
semiotics, (critical) discourse analysis and cognitive linguistics. I first
summarise each chapter and then provide an evaluation of the contribution that
the volume makes as a whole to the field.
SUMMARY
The first chapter is an introduction by the editors, Lawrence Berlin and Anita
Fetzer, outlining Chilton’s (2004) view, which they share, that politics is an
action which is essentially co-operative in the Gricean sense. As a result,
the desire to share a vision for the future leads to interactants seeking to
persuade through dialogue. It is noted, though, that this persuasion can be
self-serving, meaning participants in a political dialogue possess ‘the
potential to obfuscate coercion as cooperation’ and ‘the ability to exploit or
violate the Cooperative Principle without necessarily being readily detected
within the verbal interaction’ (3). The editors go on to discuss the
continuum already mentioned: with free contribution to a dialogue at one end
(what the editors call ‘politics as interaction’), and the opposite end where
hegemony is the order of the day (‘politics as imposition’). The remaining
chapters are divided into parts under these headings. Berlin & Fetzer survey
the main methods employed to analyse political discourse, summarising their
own previous work, as well as some of Fairclough’s work on mediatisation,
hybridisation and recontextualisation (i.a. Fairclough 1995, 1998).
The first chapter under ‘Politics as interaction’ is Titus Ensink’s ‘Internet
newspaper discussion lists: A virtual political arena?’. Ensink discusses
how newspaper discussion lists give the impression to readers of having the
opportunity to directly contribute to current societal and political
arguments. Ensink analyses discussion boards from three different websites
and on different news stories. He shows that the format of the board affects
the type of responses posted thereon — for instance, ‘The Times’ website does
not allow participants to respond directly to one another’s comments and thus
messages posted there only really respond to the article itself. The other
websites allow for such direct replies, and comments on these sites not only
discuss the issues arising from the article, but also matters stemming from
earlier postings on the discussion board.
Marjut Johansson’s chapter, ‘Political videos in digital news discourse’, also
looks at the presentation of news in the online sphere, but with a focus on
the functions of videos presented alongside written news articles. Johansson
looks at twelve videos from French, British and Finnish news sources (with a
heavy bias towards French news sources, with eight videos). The videos serve
a variety of purposes — the main ones discussed are: videos which resemble
news packages found on broadcast news and contain quotes from the actors in
the article; videos which contain press conferences or political speeches
which allow readers to access the newsworthy item directly and become active
participants in the dialogue (rather than passive recipients of the
journalist’s interpretation of the news event); first hand footage (captured
by ‘citizen journalists’ on mobile phones) which function as evidence for the
claims of an article. These videos give readers an opportunity to become
immersed in the news, and more emotionally engaged in it, Johansson argues.
Peter Bull’s chapter, ‘Watch dogs or guard dogs? Adversarial discourse in
political journalism’, reviews existing research in the microanalysis of three
areas of political journalism: broadcast interviews, press conferences, and
news broadcasts. He does this in order to conclude whether journalists act as
watch dogs, by holding governments to account, or guard dogs, who seek only to
savage and attack politicians. The chapter sees Bull summarising Clayman &
Heritage’s extensive work in this area (e.g. Clayman & Heritage 2002a,b;
Clayman et al. 2006, 2007, 2010), in the main discussing their work on
presidential press conferences which showed, using extensive multivariate
analyses, an increase in adversialness in journalists’ questions. Work by
Eriksson (2011) and Ekström (2001), finding that news reports move from
mediating political stories to critically interpreting what is happening in
the political sphere, is also summarised. Bull adduces these studies as
background for his own work. A number of his studies find high rates of
conflictual questions in British news interviews. These conflictual questions
lead to equivocation on the part of the politician (Bull et al. 1996, Bull &
Elliott 1998, Bull 2003). Bull describes the advantages and disadvantages of
the increasing ‘guard dog’ role of journalists — advantages being protecting
the public from government abuses and disadvantages including increased
cynicism and political apathy amongst the public at large.
‘Types of positioning in television election debates’ by Verena Minow analyses
four television election debates from the US, Britain and Australia between
2008 and 2010. Minow gives details of constraints on interaction at such
debates, including the presence of a moderator or live audience, whether the
interactants are allowed to address one another directly and whether the
politicians can make opening/closing statements. Minow then gives details of
Positioning Theory (Harré & van Langenhove 1991; van Langenhove & Harré 1994),
which asserts that speakers often refer to their personal attributes and
personality traits in order to position themselves in conversation (and this
implicitly positions conversational partners, too). Examples of positioning
are given from the four election debates analysed, with personal narratives or
other explicit positioning strategies used by politicians to highlight their
likeability, ability, honesty and achievements. These positioning strategies
either implicitly suggest that the converse is true of the political opponent,
or these undesirable traits are somehow made explicit. Whilst the examples
chosen were both interesting and informative, one would have liked to see an
indication of the frequency that these strategies are employed, so that one
does not have to trawl through the transcripts of the debates.
‘Personal marketing and political rhetoric’ by Vladimir Dosev analyses how
Bulgarian politicians utilise marketing strategies to sell their images, as
well as their messages. Dosev first describes the importance placed on the
accents of the two candidates in the 2005 Sofia mayoral election. Tatyana
Doncheva had a strong provincial accent which marked her as not being from
Sofia; her campaign utilised this aspect of her ‘image’ to show her as being
different from, and preferable to, her ‘tight-styled native Sofian’ (116)
opponent. Dosev also notes the importance of footballing metaphors in
Bulgarian political discourse: ‘football match’ (= election campaign),
‘injured players’ (= disappointing political colleagues), ‘significant
transfers’ (= potential coalition partners), etc. This adds, Dosev suggests,
to the view that political media genres are under pressure to entertain, as
well as inform. In the final section, Dosev suggests how recurrent ‘political
myths’ are manifest in the Bulgarian public sphere: ‘the myth of the
Conspiratorial Enemy’, ‘the Valiant Leader myth’, and ‘the United We Stand
myth’ (121-3), all played on by politicians and their spin-doctors.
Eric Anchimbe’s ‘Private dialogue in public space: ‘Motions of support’
letters as response to political action’ explores a discourse type common in
Cameroon (and Francophone West Africa more generally) but not really found in
Western politics — the ‘motions de soutien’ (motions of support) — public
letters written by (senior) members of regional, ethnic or social groups to
the President praising him or pledging support. Recurrent patterns are found
in the letters, to the extent that these actions have become routinized.
Firstly, authors introduce themselves and express why they are ratified to
speak on behalf of others (133-4). The senders seek to establish common
cause between themselves and the President, by praising his policies and
previous achievements (134-5). This is followed by thanking the President
for various actions which have benefited the group(s) they represent (135-6).
The groups then commit themselves to supporting the President further
(136-7). The previous strategies serve as mitigation for the requests for
further beneficial actions which follow (137-8). A prayer for the long life
of the President forms the subsequent part of the MoS, since ‘the job of the
president is interpreted as a divine mission and he alone is viewed as the
only one who can achieve it’ (138). An optional element of attacking the
President’s opponents follows (139). The final act is the signature of the
MoS, which gives it authenticity, especially if it is signed by a large number
of people.
In the first chapter in Part III ‘Politics as imposition’, Liliana
Ionescu-Ruxăndoiu explores how authority can be called into question and
dialogue made persuasive in the Romanian parliament in ‘Perspectivation in the
Romanian parliamentary discourse’. Ionescu-Ruxăndoiu discusses how quotation,
rhetorical questions and irony are used in speeches made before the Romanian
parliament during a debate about whether the President should be suspended
from office for various breaches of the Constitution (the conclusion of the
debate saw him suspended for thirty days). She shows how quotations in the
debate were used as arguments of authority (‘argumentum ad verecundiam’), and
took the President’s previous utterances and turned them into a source of
ridicule (158-9). Rhetorical questions were used, Ionescu-Ruxăndoiu argues,
to ‘implicitly claim a similarity of views between the speaker and a large
part of the audience’ (160). This type of strategy is an attempt to align the
speaker with the audience. The final strategy explored in this paper is the
use of irony. Irony can be seen to bring criticism of the President into even
starker focus. The author argues that all of these strategies have in common
the Bakhtinian notion of ‘double-voicedness’, which allows speakers to be
highly critical but, at the same time, dissociate themselves from the
responsibility of what is said.
‘The making of a new American revolution or ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing’:
“It’s time to reload”’ is the contribution of one of the editors, Lawrence
Berlin. In it he uses Positioning Theory to analyse Sarah Palin’s speech to
explain her appeal to Tea Party supporters and show what he believes to be a
lack of substance in her discourse. Berlin also uses his Multilayered Model
of Context (Berlin 2007, 2011) to analyse the extrasituational, situational,
interactional and linguistic contexts of two Palin speeches. He notes the
importance of Palin speaking on Ronald Reagan’s birthday, in Republican
states, at important points in the stages of the passing of the ‘Obamacare’
healthcare reforms. Analysing her interactional practices, Berlin notes how
Palin is quick to relate to her audience: discussing her credentials as a wife
and mother, contrasting herself with ‘a bunch of elites in Washington’ (179),
as well as inclusivization with ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ (180). In the analysis
of her discourse, Berlin finds a great deal of evidence of redundancy (that
is, flouting Grice’s quantity maxim), as well as instances of logorrhea (the
flouting of quantity, manner and relation maxims). Berlin uncovers much
evidence of contradiction in Palin’s speeches, too. She derides Obama for
focusing on ‘that hopey, changey thing’ (186) but spends much of her speech
referring to the need for change. Berlin argues that Palin’s use of
positioning in her speeches (i.e. positioning herself as just like the Tea
Party activists she is speaking to), outweighs the contradictions in her
speech for her audience. She does not represent, in their view, the
Washington elite which has left them feeling disenfranchised, and this
explains, to some extent, her popularity amongst Tea Party members.
Ibrahim El-Hussari’s chapter, ‘Remaking U.S. foreign policy for a new
beginning with the Arab and Muslim worlds: Linguistic and discursive features
of President Obama’s Cairo speech’, explores how Barack Obama constructs the
need for a ‘new beginning’ in relations between the U.S. and Muslim world and
how he seeks a constructive dialogue between the two countries. The paper
explores the speech because it can be seen as a firebreak between George W.
Bush’s approach to the Middle East and the approach which Obama sets out.
El-Hussari also argues that Obama is trying to cast himself as a man of peace
in light of being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (198) — this seems dubious to
me, since the prize was awarded on 9 October 2009 and the speech being
analysed took place some months before on 4 June 2009. Critical discourse
analysis (CDA), it is argued, allows the analyst to not only give a deeper
understanding of the text itself, but also what is not said by Obama (201).
In his analysis, El-Hussari suggests that the speech follows a sequence of
‘situation-problem-solution’ (202). A number of examples support the idea
that Obama seeks to be the willing peacemaker to facilitate solutions to
problems between the West and the Muslim world (206). El-Hussari then goes on
to describe how Obama cannot be the honest peacemaker he portrays himself as
— suggesting that Obama is biased in favour of the Israelis. It is here that
El-Hussari makes increasingly political points, rather than focussing on the
analysis on the speech itself, suggesting that Palestinian violence is akin to
that found in the American War of Independence (209), for instance.
El-Hussari also analyses matters not found in the speech at hand, as further
evidence that Obama is not an honest broker. Those include the idea that the
Crusades were religious wars; the reasons violent extremists are adversaries
of the US; the violations by Israel (which he describes as ‘inspired by a myth
2000 years old’ (214)) of the conditions set out at its founding; the increase
in illegal Israeli settlements; the fact that Israel has nuclear weapons; and
US laws which prevent Arab and Muslim contributions to humanitarian charity
funds. In the conclusion, El-Hussari states that his work ‘as a CDA analyst’
(217) has guided the interpretation of the Cairo speech; the feeling that one
gets from the chapter is that his political views have, to some extent, been
the primary driving force of the analysis, rather than the linguistic content
of the speech at hand.
‘War-normalizing dialogue (WND): The Israeli case study’ by Dalia
Gavriely-Nuri looks at how political and military figures use discursive
strategies broadly described as war-normalizing to gain the support of the
public for (new) wars. The chapter describes various types of WND and where
it occurs, as well as giving examples from previously published studies
(Gavriely-Nuri 2008, 2009, 2010; Gavriely-Nury & Balas 2010) of such discourse
from Israeli public discourse. According to Gavriely-Nuri, WND has four main
functions: i) euphemization, giving a positive ‘spin’ on war, e.g. giving an
opportunity for bravery, a feeling of self-worth, etc.; ii) naturalization,
representing war as a natural force, e.g. the naming of Operation Blue Sky;
iii) legitimation, representing war as a moral and rational act, e.g.
Operation Iraqi Freedom was worthy since it had the aim of delivering freedom;
iv) symbolic annihilation, excluding war and some of its components from the
discourse, e.g. the avoidance of mentioning death and destruction. These
discursive functions are joined with discursive elements — naming, framing
and metaphors — to form discursive strategies.
These discursive strategies are found in Israeli war-normalizing discourse.
For instance, more than a quarter of Israeli military operations were named
after natural phenomena (e.g. Lightning, Cypress, The Poplar’s Song) (230). A
number of war-normalizing metaphors are also discussed, including WAR IS
SPORT, WAR IS A MEDICINE, and WAR IS BUSINESS. Gavriely-Nuri suggests that WND
is used to turn an event that needs the consent and support of the public
(war) into a normal event that causes as little disruption to the public as
possible. Scope for comparative analyses on normalizing discourses around the
world is noted.
The final chapter is Christoph Sauer’s ‘Multimodality and performance:
Britain’s first Holocaust Memorial Day (BBC on January 27, 2001)’. Sauer
analyses how informational and commemorative discourses are combined in the
presentation of the ceremony for Holocaust Memorial Day on the BBC’s Memorial
Day live broadcast. Informed by multimodal semiotics, audience design, and
participation framework (Goffman 1981), Sauer discusses how two dialogues are
maintained — one for those present in Westminster Central Hall (where the
commemoration took place) and one for the television audience who see the
ceremony, which is supplemented by voice-over commentary. Sauer discusses in
great detail how the images shown, the language used by the contributors and
commentators, and the music which accompanies these aspects were frequently
congruent, which aids viewers in their comprehension of the memorial and the
events which are being commemorated. A substantial appendix provides a
multimodal transcript of the event.
EVALUATION
This volume is, to use a hackneyed phrase, a mixed bag. Anchimbe’s chapter is
particularly welcome as a thorough study of a genre not found in Western
political culture which has been the main source of research in political
discourse analysis. Berlin’s chapter is a reminder of the importance of a
multitude of different contexts to the interpretation of a text (situational,
extrasituational, interactional and discourse). Sauer’s chapter is the result
of a painstaking analysis of a multimodal piece of data, and is a model for
the amount of detailed work which needs to be carried out to have a thorough
understanding of what is going on in televised events of this type.
However, the overall impression this volume gives is of a collection of
studies published before enough empirical work has been carried out — many
appear to be pilot studies which give interesting interim findings, but these
are tentative ones more suited to a conference environment, and not a book
which claims to offer ‘illuminating and persuasive analyses of dialogue in
politics’.
In addition, there is evidence of an overly passive editorial approach, with
some chapters suffering from issues with respect to clarity of expression
(e.g. ‘We should look at where and how these discussion points are addressed
in the discussion, and if the discussion has relevance to the discussion about
these points’ (29)). Proof-reading could also have been more thorough: on the
same page, one can find: ‘In about half of the reactions posters define there
[sic] own identity’ (29).
The introduction contains some useful suggestions for how political dialogue
can be studied (ethnomethodology, speech-act theory, facework and empirical
political science are all mentioned (5)). If studies using these approaches
were also found in the book, a more thorough exploration of dialogue in
politics might have been provided. As it is, what is offered here is an
occasionally interesting book demonstrating the importance of looking at
dialogic data in political discourse analysis. However, a great deal more
work needs to be done before we have a comprehensive understanding of this
area of public communication.
REFERENCES
Bull, Peter. 2003. The microanalysis of political communication: Claptrap and
ambiguity. London: Routledge.
Bull, Peter & Judy Elliot. 1998. Level of threat: Means of assessing
interviewer toughness and neutrality. Journal of Language and Social
Psychology 17. 220-244.
Bull, Peter, Judy Elliott, Derrol Palmer & Libby Walker. 1996. Why politicians
are three-faced: The face model of political interviews. British Journal of
Social Psychology 35. 267-284.
Clayman, Steven & John Heritage. 2002a. The news interview. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Clayman, Steven & John Heritage. 2002b. Questioning presidents: Journalistic
deferences and adversarialness in the press conferences of U.S. Presidents
Eisenhower and Reagan. Journal of Communication 52. 749-775.
Clayman, Steven, Marc Elliot, John Heritage & Laurie McDonald. 2006.
Historical trends in questioning the presidents, 1953-2000. Presidential
Studies Quarterly 36. 561-583.
Clayman, Steven, Marc Elliot, John Heritage & Laurie McDonald. 2007. When does
the watchdog bark? Conditions of aggressive questioning in presidential news
conferences. American Sociological Review 72. 23-41.
Clayman, Steven, Marc Elliott, John Heritage & Megan Beckett. 2010. A
watershed in White House journalism: Explaining the post-1968 rise of
aggressive presidential news. Political Communication 27. 229-247.
Chilton, Paul. 2004. Analysing political discourse: Theory and practice.
London: Routledge.
Ekström, Mats. 2001. Politicians interviewed on television news. Discourse &
Society 12. 563-584.
Eriksson, Göran. 2011. Adversarial moments: A study of short-form interviews
in the news. Journalism 12. 51-69.
Fairclough, Norman. 1995. Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of
language. London: Longman.
Fairclough, Norman. 1998. ‘Political discourse in the media: An analytic
framework’. In: Bell, Allen & Peter Garret (eds). Approaches to media
discourse. 142-162. Oxford: Blackwell.
Gavriely, Nuri, Dalia. 2008. The ‘metaphorical annihilation’ of the second
Lebanon war (2006) from the Israeli political discourse. Discourse & Society
19. 5-20.
Gavriely, Nuri, Dalia. 2009. Friendly fire: War-normalizing metaphors in the
Israeli political discourse. Journal of Peace Education 6. 153-169.
Gavriely, Nuri, Dalia. 2010. Rainbow, snow, and the Poplar’s Song: The
‘annihilative naming’ of Israeli military practices. Armed Forces and Society
36. 825-842.
Gavriely, Nuri, Dalia & Tiki Balas. 2010. ‘Annihilating framing’: How Israeli
television framed wounded soldiers during the second Lebanon war (2006).
Journalism 11. 409-423.
Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press.
Harré, Rom & Luk van Langenhove. 1991. Varieties of positioning. Journal for
the Theory of Social Behaviour 21. 393-407.
van Langenhove, Luk & Rom Harré. 1994. Cultural stereotypes and positioning
theory. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 24. 359-372.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
James Murphy is a PhD candidate in the Linguistics and English Language
department at The University of Manchester. His PhD research explores the
pragmatics of political apologies, focussing on those produced by British
politicians. He uses speech act theory, conversation analysis, (neo-)Gricean
pragmatics, and politeness theory in his work.
Jul 03
ThE CLOwNbook review
AUTHOR: Jennifer Rowsell
TITLE: Working with Multimodality
SUBTITLE: Rethinking Literacy in a Digital Age
PUBLISHER: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
YEAR: 2012
REVIEWER: Stefania M. Maci, University of Bergamo
SUMMARY
“Working with Multimodality” links the field of ‘New Literacy Studies’ to
multimodality by trying to consider how literacy practices can be better
understood within wider domains. In other words, New Literacy Studies and
multimodality show how meaning-making processes exploit multiple modes in
order to create texts that are modally complex. Yet, to date, very few studies
have examined multimodal composition outside educational contexts. Therefore,
while concentrating on professional contexts involving multimodal creation,
the author attempts to offer a literacy framework for both education and
training, suggesting “a need to think far more progressively about what
literacy might mean in the future with digital and media convergence” (p. 2).
Rowsell’s belief is that working with modes allows the development of higher
levels of abstraction and universalization across discipline-specific
practices. As suggested by Halliday (1978), Rowsell defines a mode as the
textual product resulting from the “cultural shaping of a material” (p. 3).
Naturally, given the fact that a multimodal text is composed of more than one
mode, it is essential for the author to disclose how modes work. Indeed,
meaning-making processes can be transmodal (i.e. when the elements within a
text create a whole, e.g., films, where meaning is provided by both visual and
sound modes), intermodal (i.e. when elements within a text create a link
between modes, although they may exist independently from one another, while
at the same time cross-referencing, e.g., illustrations), or intramodal (i.e.
where more than one element jointly creates meaning, e.g., the clothing
industry, where colour combines with particular textiles in order to create a
more pronounced effect). The relationship between modes is dependant on the
mode-assembling process, which takes into consideration which, amongst the
available modes, is the most suitable or has the greatest aptness (Kress 2010)
with regard to text creation. This process transcends time and determines a
transformation, or transduction, of the modes under consideration.
As said above, meaning-making processes in literacy education have seldom been
investigated. The gap that the author would like to bridge within literacy
education is therefore closely related to the way in which we can work on the
creation of complex multimodal texts. Indeed, ‘new’ literacies, such as sound,
images and hypertexts, exist alongside ‘old’ literacies, such as space, dance,
movement and textiles which, in the author’s opinion, should be taken into
consideration in literacy education policies, since learning with modality
means converging both the social and subjective elements of meaning-making,
which is a process that is always culturally-based and socially-inherent
(p.4), and which we must bear in mind in any attempt to explain what literacy
may mean if linked to today’s fast-paced digital and media convergence.
The analysis, based on an ethno-methodological approach, focuses on nine
different modes: film, sound, visual, interface, videogames, space, movement,
word, and textiles. Each is examined as a case study and dealt with in nine
different chapters, starting with film, which embraces several other modes,
and then moving on to all the others, each of which is connected to the
previous one. The ethnographic means by which such modes are examined consist
of thirty open-structured interviews with creators, who range from web
designers and film producers to textile designers and dancers, and from song
writers to videogame creators and advertisers. The investigation takes a look
at storytelling as a way of creating meaning. What the author actually does is
look at the social practices involved in modal production in order to show
that design and creation are more important than the final product itself. The
analysis of case studies across modes outside the context of educational
pedagogy is, according to the author, extremely interesting, as it allows the
elaboration of a framework for modal learning. Multiple modes are thus brought
together to form an integrated theory of multimodality. The questions at the
end of each chapter provide food for thought, while key-points are dealt with
by the author’s comments on each case study presented.
Chapter one: Film
In this chapter, consideration is given to representation rather than
communication. As Kress (2010) claims, representation concerns the addresser,
whereas communication focuses on the recipient. The storytelling emerging
during interviews with Tobias Wiegand (an animator), Robin Benger (a
documentary director) and Rebecca Birch (a film producer) shows how
professionals understand (and reproduce) the representation of a perceptual
world. As they all explain, various modes, such as words, music, space, and
movement, are grouped together in films in a synaesthic way so as to represent
ideas, emotions and perceptual worlds. As such, films require a great deal of
planning. Educational movie-making projects require the development of skills
concerning the transformation of a topic into a narrative which needs to be
developed in order to provide verbal, visual and sound coherence.
Chapter two: Sound
Music is not only appreciated from a cultural viewpoint, but is also
synaesthically-constructed, as it involves different sounds, colours,
emotions, stories and meaning. This chapter examines sound as a way of
conveying and interpreting meanings, as revealed through interviews with David
Murphy (a composer), and Paul Chivers (a mixer-composer). In their opinion,
meaning results from either the combination of chords, or the linking of
lyrics to melodies, or even a remix of old music, so as to create new
compositions. Such combinations may become a part of literacy, since, for
example, music can be the equivalent of words, genres, and registers.
Chapter three: Visual
According to Rowsell, visual elements are linked to creativity, subjectivity
and intuition. This is clearly demonstrated through interviews with Ben Hodson
(an illustrator), Bany Mendi (a director), and Lee Edward Födi (a
writer-illustrator). Although visual elements are at the core of most texts,
this mode is seldom incorporated into language. This is a point to be taken
into consideration because today we live in an increasingly design-orientated
world. Therefore, the analysis and production of visual techniques should be
included in educational projects, as they require “thinking and expressing in
images what is often beyond linguistic capabilities” (p. 45). Indeed, the
visual mode is supplementary to other meaning-creating modes, as it enriches
the interpretation offered by a text.
Chapter four: Interface
Interface refers to “the face of digital environments” (p. 60), and as such,
it is the way in which content is displayed. Here, the focus is on interface
design, with particular regard to aesthetics-driven, user-friendly, mobile and
networked interfaces. This is a necessity, considering that people, in
particular, youth, ‘consume’ and produce digital media very quickly. The
emphasis, therefore, is on the way in which technologies converge to create
texts whose interface represents an ideal combination of function and
aesthetics. The results, as seen in interviews with Lisa Murphy (a web
director), Adrian Thiessen and Kristen Nater (a media president and
vice-president), and Joe Delisco (the icloud creator), aim to encourage both
educators and students to develop meta-awareness of web-search engine
keywords, as well as inspire web-design, with the latter being based on the
idea that web-texts are read by following an F-pattern (according to which a
text is first read on the left column and then on the rows on the right; cf.
p. 66) rather than the traditional Z-reading path (according to which a text
is read from left to right, from top to bottom, line by line; cf. Kress and
van Leeuwen, 2006).
Chapter five: Videogames
Rowsell regards videogames as problem-solving tools, as they expect players to
“strategize, communicate, interpret context, solve problems, analyze
characters, possess hand/eye coordination, have patience, understand semiotic
tools, use their spatial sense” (p. 79), which could be easily applied to the
context of literacy learning, from which students could benefit greatly,
considering that the skills pertaining to videogames are the same as those
used in modern and digital communication systems. Indeed, this is what emerges
from interviews with David Elton (a videogame creator), and Kevin Kee (a
videogame creator in the field of mobile phone technology).
Chapter six: Space
The importance of space in relation to place is the key element of interviews
with three architects, Anthony Robins, David Parker and Ana Lakoseljak. Space
and place have a cultural as well as a subjective meaning, and in literacy
learning, such a mode should be taken into consideration. Designing space
according to its social role is an important achievement in terms of
recognition of how space is used, thus requiring a meaningful fruition of
space.
Chapter seven: Movement
The mode of movement is the main focus here, in particular, with regard to
dance as a form of communication. Unlike all the other modes, which can be
experienced without a performer, movement is the only one where a performer is
required in “the midst of practice to communicate” (p. 110). The analysis of
this mode is offered through a report of interviews with Karin Kain (a ballet
dancer), Glenys McQueen-Fuentes (a ballet teacher), and Derek Metz (an actor).
The lesson to be learned here is that movement, be it formalized (e.g.
ballet), or free (e.g. expressive movement and dance), allows people to vent
their own personality traits. In literacy projects, movement allows transmodal
analysis and design, since it lets students express their own interests,
either in music or more visual forms.
Chapter eight: Word
Although language is the primary mode of communication, words can be limiting
if individuals rely only on oral expression. Words need to be supplemented by
other modes in order to allow effective communication. Such an analysis is
based on four case studies, i.e., interviews with Gary Bonilla (Creative
Director for Nestlé), Grant Lefleche (a journalist), Kari-Lynn Winters (an
author of books for children), and Gail Bowen (a playwright). In all cases,
words are seen as visual tools, which, together with either static or moving
images, can amplify and emphasize the basic meaning of a message. By aiding
students in their attempt to understand what word best conveys meaning, and
where a particular lexical choice does not fulfil communication objectives,
and should therefore be excluded in favour of other modes, students will be
able, on their own, to decide which modes are the most suitable to communicate
information or ideas.
Chapter nine: Textiles
The use of textiles is a mode which has very rarely been analysed in the field
of education. However, according to Rowsell, literacy teachers can include
this mode in classroom activities because textiles, by encompassing both
design and technology, fashion and imagination, and business and economics,
offer practical projects, problem-based learning and practical demonstrations.
Case studies regarding such exploitation of the textile mode in literacy
classes are offered through interviews with fashion creators Trish Ewanika and
Michelle Vanderheyden.
EVALUATION
Overall, the book is a valid introduction to literacy, as it follows a
practical rather than a theoretical approach. This places “Working with
Multimodality” among the most authoritative textbooks on New Literacy that are
currently available
A key point of the book is that it is written in a clear and user-friendly
style, and definitions of terminology are provided wherever necessary. Because
of its characteristics, “Working with Multimodality” is an invaluable resource
for teachers, trainers and students. It is suitable as further reading in a
course on literacy, particularly if the readership is comprised of students
with a very basic or limited linguistic background. It is very useful for
linguistics students and would-be language teachers and students involved in
communications studies courses. Further, individual chapters may be used as
integrated material for courses on literacy education, multimodality and
applied linguistics.
Although all chapters of the book are compelling, I would like to highlight
the part of the fourth chapter that deals specifically with web interface.
Indeed, this is a new mode of communication whereby there is no clear-cut
distinction between the text producer and the text consumer; the recipient of
the message is the ‘prosumer’, i.e., s/he is simultaneously the text producer
and text consumer. Readers of this mode are editors because they are enabled
to enter, edit and manipulate web-text while visiting a website. In addition,
to the best of my knowledge, no other books in linguistics have ever
emphasized the F-reading pattern characterizing web-texts. Overall, interface
may create interaction, and may facilitate communication, and this chapter
helps educators who are trying to develop discourse meta-awareness in
students.
Nevertheless, there are still a few criticisms to be made. Apart from a typo
on p. 56 (‘illustratorr’ instead of ‘illustrator’), in my opinion, there is
some ambiguity in the text where two terms are being defined: the concepts of
‘emic’ and ‘etic’ are mentioned on page 25, but when the term ‘emic’ first
appears (p. 9), the reader is left to his or her own devices with regard to
the interpretation of its meaning. Similarly, although on page 15 the author
provides a clear definition of ‘mode’ by referring to the one provided by
Kress, this is totally missing on page 3 under the paragraph “Modes” (where it
would be more useful). Unfortunately, the author also made a few oversights:
Kress (2010), who is quoted throughout the textbook, is not listed in the
bibliography; the same is true for Rowsell (2012), and Whorf (1929). Such
oversights are a pity, especially when considering the overall value of the
volume.
Regardless of the minor criticisms above, “Working with Multimodality” is a
valid aid for teachers, advanced students and linguists wishing to have a
better understanding of the relationship between literacy and education in our
modern digital world.
REFERENCES
Halliday, Michael 1978. Language as Social Semiotic. London: Edward Arnold.
Kress, Gunther 2010. Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary
Communication. London: Routledge.
Kress, Gunther and van Leeuwen, Teo (2006). Reading Images: The Grammar of
Visual Design. New York: Routledge.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
STEFANIA M. MACI is a researcher of English Language and Translation at the
University of Bergamo, Italy, where she teaches English linguistic courses at
graduate and undergraduate level. She is member of CERLIS (Centro di Ricerca
sui Linguaggi Specialistici, coordinated by Prof. Maurizio Gotti), CLAVIER
(The Corpus and Language Variation in English Research Group), BAAL (British
Association of Applied Linguistics), and AIA (Associazione Italiana di
Anglistica). Her research is focussed on the analysis of the English language
in academic contexts, with particular regard to the analysis of English in
National and Professional Contexts. Amongst her recent publications are:
“Glocal Features of In-flight magazines” (2012), “Arbitration in action: the
display of arbitrators’ neutrality in witness hearings” (2012); “The
Discussion Section of Medical Research Articles: A Cross Cultural Perspective”
(2012); “Fast-Track Publications: The Genre of Medical Research letters”
(2012); “The Genre of Medical Conference Posters” (2012); “Poster Makers
Should Think as Much about Show Business as Science. The Case of Medical
Posters in a Diachronic Perspective” (2012); and the monographs “Tourism
Discourse: professional, promotional, digital voices” (2013); “The Language of
Tourism” (2010), and “The Linguistic Design of Mary Magdalene” (2008).
Jun 27
ThE CLOwNbook review
EDITOR: Nicholas Bannan
TITLE: Music, Language, and Human Evolution
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2012
REVIEWER: Jody L Barnes, (personal interest – not currently working at a university)
SUMMARY
“Music, Language, and Human” Evolution, edited by Nicholas Bannan, is a
collection devoted to the role evolution has played in the development of the
two faculties of language and music. The book grew from a conference held at
the University of Reading in 2004. Each chapter has its own references, and in
one case, a discography of examples. Also included are a key to abbreviations,
a glossary, and index, as well as a DVD of supplemental video material.
Part I is an introduction, Bannan’s own “Music, Language, and Human
Evolution.” Bannan gives a brief history of the literature on music’s
relationship with language, from Rousseau through Darwin to more recent
scholars like John Blacking. He explains the need for a new investigation into
these abilities following the rise of such fields as biolinguistics and
zoomusicology.
Following the introduction, the articles are grouped into sections according
to the academic disciplines on which the authors focus their research. Part
II: “Perspectives from Anthropology and Archaeology,” begins with Chapter 2,
“Music and Mosaics: The Evolution of Human Abilities” by Robert Foley. This
chapter concerns the biological history of humanity’s predecessors,
concentrating on those evolutionary developments which allowed for the
emergence of language and music. The developments of an upright stance, as
well as greater breath control are the most important of these. He then
investigates the standard hypotheses explaining the evolution of music,
including sexual selection, group cohesion, or as a means of information
transfer (like language).
Chapter 3, “The Evolution of the Human Vocal Tract: Specialized for Speech?”
by Margaret Clegg, traces the evolution of the vocal tract from our earliest
ancestors through modern homo sapiens. Clegg challenges the traditional belief
that because Neanderthals had a higher laryngeal position, they had lacked the
capacity for speech. She notes that up to the 19th century, researchers had
trouble determining why chimpanzees couldn’t speak, noting that their vocal
tracts were extremely similar to those of modern humans. The majority of the
chapter is taken up with critiquing traditional assumptions on pre-human
linguistic ability based upon the available evidence, finally determining that
the descent of the larynx was not due to the requirements of speech
production, but rather due to other factors, such as “bipedalism, brain
expansion, and facial reduction,” (73). Chapter 4, “When the Words Dry Up:
Music and Material Metaphors Half a Million Years ago” by Clive Gamble, closes
Part II by discussing performance spaces as being of primary importance for
musical activities. Focusing his attention on locations of musical ritual in
villages in northern Namibia and West Sussex, England, he concludes that
“music has always been a part of hominin social life, but . . . during
evolution it was co-opted to enhance positive emotions at hominin gatherings”
(81).
Part III, entitled “Perspectives on the evolutionary prerequisites for musical
behaviour” leads off with Iain Morley’s “Hominin Physiological Evolution and
the Emergence of Musical Capacities,” an attempt to determine the evolutionary
functions behind man’s musical abilities. Morley focuses on the lowering of
the human larynx, larger cervical vertebrae (allowing increased control over
sound production), and an enlarged Broca’s area.
This is followed by Chapter 6, “Vocal Traditions of the World: Towards an
Evolutionary Account of Voice Production in Music” by Tran Quang Hai and
Bannan. It begins with a brief survey of various theories on the evolution of
human voice, from Darwin to the present. The meat of the chapter, however, is
made up of a survey of different types of vocal production found in musics
throughout the world. This follows from Lomax’s earlier taxonomy, which he
termed cantometrics (1968, 1982), as well as Von Horbostel and Sachs’s
taxonomy of musical instruments (1914). The authors propose ten separate
categories based upon “the specific ways in which the phonatory/articulatory
apparatus is employed” (153), with descriptions, examples, and references to a
discography for each. Chapter 7, “Found Objects in the Musical Practices of
Hunter-Gatherers: Implications for the Evolution of Instrumental Music,” is
listed as co-authored by Pedro Espi-Sanchis and Bannan but was written solely
by Bannan, based upon Espi-Sanchis’s presentation at the aforementioned
University of Reading conference. The text discusses the relatively recently
emerging fields of biomusicology and archaeomusicology, and their respective
attempts to explain the origins of music, followed by discussion of the role
of human kinetic movement in the development of musical rhythm. Finally,
Espi-Sanchis discusses a simple flute which can play the overtone series, and
explains a group musical performance found on the accompanying DVD (see
below).
Part IV , “Perspectives from Social and Cognitive Psychology,” begins with
Chapter 8, Robin Dunbar’s essay “On the Evolutionary Function of Song and
Dance,” which seeks to answer the question of what advantages these two
cultural universals (201) may have had for human survival. Miller’s sexual
selection hypothesis (1999, 2000) is considered, as Dunbar notes that males
are generally more musical than females. Also investigated is “Multilevel
Selection Theory,” which focuses on the difference between group selection
(which is focused on an individual’s genes) as opposed to social selection
(which focuses on the group as a whole.) Ultimately, Dunbar concludes that
music predated the emergence of language, allowing humans to become more
group-oriented, facilitating living and surviving in groups.
Chapter 9, by Björn Merker, is entitled “The Vocal Learning Constellation:
Imitation, Ritual Culture, Encephalization.” It focuses on humans’ ability to
reproduce sounds by ear using their voice — a feat rare among mammals and
found in no other primates. Merker examines the concept of “vocal
emancipation”, “the full range of devices by which vocal production is
released from its inner constraints” to form wholly new patterns (222), by
comparing human vocal ability with birdsong, noting the relation between brain
size and vocal ability. This is followed by an examination of the vocal
learning mechanism, the most common method of learning songs in both humans
and birds. He finds, interestingly, that the biomechanics of song are more
demanding than those of speech, adding weight to the theory that singing
developed in humans before language — also noting that while many primates
can be said to have the ability to sing, humans are the only primates with the
capacity for language. Merker concludes that while the ability for learned
song appeared with human ancestors’ “first major advance in brain size,” the
capacity for language emerged with the second such leap and the emergence of
Homo sapiens.
The final section, Part V, “Perspectives from Musicology” begins with Chapter
10, “Music as an Emergent Exaptation” by Ian Cross. This chapter examines why
music has developed if it confers no immediate evolutionary advantage. He
views it as an “exaptation,” an evolutionary advance that has been repurposed.
Cross investigates the similarities between music and language — specifically
the view of music as expressing meaning in the form of emotion. He also
discusses competing theories of meaning in general, particularly information
theory as opposed to ostensive-inferential theory. Cross concludes that the
“floating intentionality” of music. That is, “its potential for its meaning .
. . to be transposed from one situation to another” (270) suggests music was
an adaptation allowing humans to integrate information across different
domains, though he also voices support for the theory that music was a means
of strengthening social bonds.
Chapter 11, “Musicians’ Performance Prosody” by Johan Sundberg, investigates
prosody in both music and language. Sundberg theorizes that there are three
types of performance rules in music, grouping, differentiation, and emphasis,
which are also found in language. While he finds parallels between these rules
in music and speech, the rules themselves aren’t necessary for language, as
borne out by experiments. He determines that music performance is similar in
many ways to other forms of human communication.
Chapter 12, by Nicholas Bannan, is “Harmony and its Role in Human Evolution”,
an investigation into the ways in which harmony may have developed in music.
Noting that monophony, two identical notes played in unison, is the only
musical universal related to harmony, he proposes that the intonation of a
singer in a large room or other enclosed space with a long reverb time may
have led to experiments with self-harmony,, a singer basically harmonizing
with him or herself. He then discusses the ways in which harmony emphasizes
vowel formants. He concludes by noting three areas in which song production
could “confer survival advantages”: the ability of singing to comfort, the
flexibility of the voice in response to “social and environmental stimuli,”
and simultaneous vocalization eliciting emotions in a group setting (327).
Included with the book is a DVD of supplemental material, organized in eight
sections. The first, “Vocal Production,” is an extensive presentation by Tran
on the taxonomy of vocal production, featuring spectrographic analysis of each
form discussed. This allows the viewer to see the frequencies highlighted by
each form. Following this is “Nogoqokos Singing,” a short clip of Nogcinile
Yekani, a female Ngoqoko singer, as an example of singing harmonics over a
drone. “Instrumental Production” is next, with Pedro Espi-Sanchez creating a
flute out of a piece of kale found on the beach at Cape Town. Following this
is a clip from the aforementioned conference in which each participant is
given one note to play as they perform a collective improvisation. Finally,
there are clips of various pipe ensembles from Botswana and South Africa. The
fourth clip is again Nogcinile Yekani, this time performing a song on a bow,
blowing through a hole in the tip like a flute, while accompanying herself by
bowing the bowstring. The fifth clip is Espi-Sanchez performing on the kale
flute fashioned in clip three. This is followed by a clip of Bannan and his
students performing various vocal techniques which emphasize vocal harmonics,
followed by another clip of a vuvuzela orchestra, and a cantor singing in a
hall which emphasizes vowel overtones. The final clip is simply the same clip
of the cantor again, (presumably a production error.)
EVALUATION
While this collection covers a wide variety of approaches to understanding
music and language in terms of human evolution, this detracts from its value
as a whole.. That is, avenues that one may expect the authors to explore tend
to fall by the wayside if they’re not part of the background of the author of
a given article. A clear example is that throughout the collection of pieces
on music and language, there’s very little discussion of semantics or syntax
in music, with the vast majority of the text being concerned instead with the
fields of anatomy and anthropology. As language isn’t language if it conveys
no information, one would expect more attention to this essential aspect of
its evolution, and the parallel problem of meaning in music.
A recurring problem one finds throughout the text is that many of the articles
simply don’t pay off in terms of conclusions. This is most apparent in the
final two chapters of the text. Sundberg’s “Musicians’ Performance Prosody”
discusses computer-generated music and evolutionary linguistics, but while
purporting to answer questions about the relationship between music and
speech, can only go as far as to say that there are “similarities” between
singing and speaking. Interestingly, in one case where the expected
similarities do not appear — that of humans’ footstep frequency while walking
paralleling note frequency in musical works — serves as counter-evidence to
Mark Changizi’s hypothesis in “Harnessed”, which avers that musical movement
is explicitly derived from human kinetic movement — specifically, walking
(see Changizi 2011: chapter 4). Changizi’s text isn’t mentioned in Cross’s
chapter, presumably due to not yet being published when Cross’s paper was
written. The final chapter, “Harmony and its Role in Human Evolution,” doesn’t
really deal with evolution at all, providing more a history of the development
of harmony in general.
Aside from these issues, the book is a well put-together introduction to the
various problems involved with evolutionary linguistics and musicology, as
well as fields concerned with its study. While not every chapter will be of
use to those in every field which may have an interest in language and
evolution, there is still much of value to anyone studying the relationship
between music and language or language and evolution. In short, this is a
useful volume, especially as a starting point for those investigating the
various ways in which evolutionary theory intersects with the disciplines of
linguistics and musicology.
REFERENCES
Blacking, John. 1973. How musical is Man? Seattle: University of Washington
Press.
Changizi, Mark. 2011. Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and
Transformed Ape into Man. Dallas, TX: Benbella Books.
Darwin, Charles. 1871. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex.
London: John Murray.
Gould, Stephen Jay, and Elizabeth S. Vrba. 1982. Exaptation — a Missing Term
in the Science of Form. Paleobiology 8. 4-15.
Hornbostel, E. von and C. Sachs. 1914. Systematik der Musikinstrumente: Ein
Versuch. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 46. 553-590.
Lomax, Alan. 1968. Folk Song Style and Culture. Washington, DC: American
Association for the Advancement of Science.
Lomax, Alan. 1982. Brief Progress Report: Cantometrics-Choreometrics Projects.
Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council 4. 142-145.
Miller, Geoffrey. 1999. Sexual Selection for Cultural Displays. In R. Dunbar,
C. Knight, and C. Power, eds., The Evolution of Culture. Edinburgh, Edinburgh
University Press.
Miller, Geoffrey. 2000. The Mating Mind. London: Heinemann.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1781/1817. Essai sur l’origine des langues.
Où il est
parlé de la Mélodie et de l’Imitation musicale. Paris: A. Berlin.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
J. L. Barnes is a philosophy and linguistics graduate currently residing in
the Louisville, KY area. Areas of interest include semantics, philosophy of
language, semiotics, and the relationship between music and language.
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