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 07
ThE CLOwNannouncements
Title: Communication in Humans and Other Animals
Series Title: Advances in Interaction Studies 4
Publication Year: 2013
Publisher: John Benjamins
http://www.benjamins.com/
Book URL: http://benjamins.com/catalog/ais.4
Author: Gisela Håkansson
Author: Jennie Westander
Electronic: ISBN: 9789027272010 Pages: 242 Price: Europe EURO 99.00
Electronic: ISBN: 9789027272010 Pages: 242 Price: U.K. £ 83.00
Electronic: ISBN: 9789027272010 Pages: 242 Price: U.S. $ 149.00
Hardback: ISBN: 9789027204578 Pages: 242 Price: U.K. £ 83.00
Hardback: ISBN: 9789027204578 Pages: 242 Price: Europe EURO 104.94
Hardback: ISBN: 9789027204578 Pages: 242 Price: U.S. $ 149.00
Paperback: ISBN: 9789027204585 Pages: 242 Price: Europe EURO 38.16
Paperback: ISBN: 9789027204585 Pages: 242 Price: U.K. £ 30.00
Paperback: ISBN: 9789027204585 Pages: 242 Price: U.S. $ 54.00
Abstract:
Communication is a basic behaviour, found across animal
species. Human language is often thought of as a unique
system, which separates humans from other animals. This
textbook serves as a guide to different types of communication,
and suggests that each is unique in its own way: human verbal
and nonverbal communication, communication in nonhuman
primates, in dogs and in birds. Research questions and
findings from different perspectives are summarized and
integrated to show students similarities and differences in the
rich diversity of communicative behaviours.
A core topic is how young individuals proceed from not being able to
communicate to reaching a state of competent communicators,
and the role of adults in this developmental process.
Evolutionary aspects are also taken into consideration, and
ideas about the evolution of human language are examined.
The cross-disciplinary nature of the book makes it useful for
courses in linguistics, biology, sociology and psychology, but it
is also valuable reading for anyone interested in understanding
communicative behaviour.
Jul 07
ThE CLOwNannouncements
Title: Multimodality and Active Listenership
Subtitle: A Corpus Approach
Series Title: Corpus and Discourse
Publication Year: 2013
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/
Book URL: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/multimodality-and-active-listenership-9780567175151/
Author: Dawn Knight
Paperback: ISBN: 9780567175151 Pages: 272 Price: U.K. £ 24.99
Abstract:
Current corpora are invaluable resources for generating accurate and objective
analyses of patterns of language use. However, spoken corpora are effectively
mono-modal, presenting data in the same physical medium – text. The reality of
a discourse situation is lost in its representation as text. Using multimodal
data sets when conducting corpus-based pragmatic analyses is one solution.
This book looks at multimodal corpora in some depth, using backchanneling as
the conversational feature to be analysed. It provides a bottom-up
investigation of the issues and challenges faced at every stage of multimodal
corpus construction and analysis, as well as providing an in-depth linguistic
analysis of a cross section of multimodal corpus data. The collaborative and
co-operative nature of backchannels is highlighted in this book and an adapted
pragmatic-functional linguistic coding matrix for the characterisation of
backchanneling phenomena is presented. Dawn Knight also looks at possible
directions in the construction and use of multimodal corpus linguistics.
Jul 07
ThE CLOwNannouncements
Title: Humboldt, Worldview and Language
Publication Year: 2013
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
http://www.euppublishing.com
Book URL: http://www.euppublishing.com/book/9780748668793
Author: James W. Underhill
Paperback: ISBN: 9780748668793 Pages: 176 Price: U.K. £ 19.99
Abstract:
With the loss of many of the world’s languages, it is important to question
what will be lost to humanity with their demise. It is frequently argued that
a language engenders a ‘worldview’, but what do we mean by this term?
Attributed to German politician and philologist Wilhelm von Humboldt
(1767-1835), the term has since been adopted by numerous linguists. Within
specialist circles it has become associated with what is known as the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis which suggests that the nature of a language influences
the thought of its speakers and that different language patterns yield
different patterns of thought.
Underhill’s concise and rigorously researched book clarifies the main ideas
and proposals of Humboldt’s linguistic philosophy and demonstrates the way his
ideas can be adopted and adapted by thinkers and linguists today. A detailed
glossary of terms is provided in order to clarify key concepts and to
translate the German terms used by Humboldt.
Jul 05
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhannouncements
Title: Introduction to Peircean Visual Semiotics
Series Title: Bloomsbury Advances in Semiotics
Publication Year: 2013
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/
Book URL: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/introduction-to-peircean-visual-semiotics-9781441109408/
Author: Tony Jappy
Hardback: ISBN: 9781441151636 Pages: 240 Price: U.K. £ 75.00
Paperback: ISBN: 9781441109408 Pages: 240 Price: U.K. £ 24.99
Abstract:
Contemporary culture is as much visual as literary. This book explores an
approach to the communicative power of the pictorial and multimodal documents
that make up this visual culture, using Peircean semiotics. It develops the
enormous theoretical potential of Peirce’s theory of signs of signs
(semiotics) and the persuasive strategies in which they are employed (visual
rhetoric) in a variety of documents.
Unlike presentations of semiotics that take the written word as the reference
value, this book examines this particular rhetoric using pictorial signs as
its prime examples. The visual is not treated as the ‘poor relation’ to the
(written) word. It is therefore possible to isolate more clearly the specific
constituent properties of word and image, taking these as the basic material
of a wide range of cultural artefacts. It looks at comic strips, conventional
photographs, photographic allegory, pictorial metaphor, advertising campaigns
and the huge semiotic range exhibited by the category of the ‘poster’. This is
essential reading for all students of semiotics, introductory and advanced.
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).
Jul 03
ThE CLOwNannouncements
Title: Interviews with M.A.K. Halliday
Subtitle: Language Turned Back on Himself
Publication Year: 2013
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/
Book URL: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/interviews-with-mak-halliday-9781441190819/
Editor: J. R. Martin
Hardback: ISBN: 9781441154873 Pages: 288 Price: U.K. £ 70.00
Paperback: ISBN: 9781441190819 Pages: 288 Price: U.K. £ 22.99
Abstract:
This volume gathers together 14 interviews with M A K Halliday, the founder of
systemic functional linguistics (SFL), recorded over four decades – the most
recent of which was conducted in 2011 and published here for the first time.
In these engaging conversations with colleagues Halliday explores his own
development as a student of language in Britain and China, the evolution of
SFL theory around the world, its place in the field of general linguistics and
its many sites of application.
The dialogic mode enacted here allows Halliday to touch on many points of
personal history and intellectual challenge that have not been addressed in
formal publications (in his books or collected papers), including answers to
the many thought-provoking questions his colleagues had waited sometimes years
to ask. Accordingly each chapter offers a fresh illuminating window on the
innovative thinking and assured convictions of this towering figure in
linguistics.
Jul 03
ThE CLOwNannouncements
Date: Tue, 02 Jul 2013 10:10:56
From: Tamás Eitler [eitler.tamas@btk.elte.hu]
Subject: Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines
Full Title: Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines
Short Title: CADAAD
Date: 01-Sep-2014 – 03-Sep-2014
Location: Budapest, Hungary
Contact Person: Tamás Eitler
Meeting Email: cadaad2014@gmail.com
Web Site: http://cadaad.net/cadaad_2014
Call Deadline: 01-Dec-2013
Meeting Description:
CADAAD conferences are intended to promote current directions and new developments in cross-disciplinary critical discourse research.
We are glad to announce that the 5th CADAAD Conference will take place 1-3 September 2014 and will be hosted by ELTE University, Budapest, Hungary.
Reflecting the diversity of topics and approaches in critical discourse studies, the following distinguished guests have confirmed their participation as plenary speakers:
Professor Ruth Wodak (Lancaster University)
Professor Theo Van Leeuwen (University of Technology Sydney)
Professor Lilie Chouliaraki (London School of Economics)
Professor Andreas Musolff (University of East Anglia)
Professor Crispin Thurlow (University of Washington)
2nd Call for Papers:
We welcome papers which, from a critical-analytical perspective, deal with contemporary social, scientific, political, economic, or professional discourses and genres. Possible topics include but are by no means limited to the following:
– (New) Media Discourse
– Party Political Discourse
– Advertising
– Discourses of War and Terrorism
– Power, Ideology and Dominance in Institutional Discourse
– Identity in Discourse
– Education Discourses
– Environmental Discourses
– Health Communication
– Business Communication
– Language and the Law
– Discourses of Inequality, Discrimination and Othering
– Global Economic Discourses and Discourses of the Financial Crisis
– Discourses of Political Protest and Civil (Dis)order
– Neoliberalism and the New Divides
– Anti-EU Discourses
Papers addressing the highlighted topics are especially welcome. In giving weight to these topics we wish to call to attention some of the most pressing problems currently facing Europe. We hope that CADAAD 2014 will provide a publically visible forum for critically reflecting on these issues.
We welcome papers which approach topics such as listed above from theoretical and analytical perspectives sourced from anywhere across the humanities, social and cognitive sciences, including but without being limited to the following:
– Sociolinguistics
– Multimodality
– Media and Mass Communication Studies
– Functional Linguistics
– Cognitive Linguistics
– Corpus Linguistics
– Pragmatics and Argumentation Theory
– Conversation and Discourse Analysis
– Ethnography of Communication
– Discursive Psychology
– Political Science
We especially welcome papers which re-examine existing theoretical frameworks and/or which highlight and apply new methodologies.
All papers will be allocated 20 minutes plus 10 minutes for questions. The language of the conference is English.
Abstracts of 250-350 words excluding references should be sent as MS Word attachment to cadaad2014@gmail.com before 1 December 2013. Please include in the body of the email but not in the abstract itself (1) your name, (2) affiliation and (3) email address. Notifications of acceptance will be communicated by 1 March 2014.
In addition to individual papers, panel proposals may also be submitted. Further details are available at: http://www.cadaad.net/cadaad_2014.
We are planning to offer a small number of bursaries to be applied for by delegates who come from disadvantaged circumstances. Application information will be provided on our website in autumn.
Selected papers will be published in a thematically constrained volume to be submitted to an international publisher. Other selected papers will appear in a proceedings issue of the CADAAD journal.
For further information please visit the conference webpages at http://cadaad.net/cadaad_2014 or write to the local organising committee at cadaad2014@gmail.com.
Jul 02
ThE CLOwNannouncements
Title: Spoken and Written Discourse in Online Interactions
Subtitle: A Multimodal Approach
Series Title: Routledge Studies in Multimodality
Publication Year: 2013
Publisher: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
http://www.routledge.com/
Book URL: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415523165/
Author: Maria Grazia Sindoni
Hardback: ISBN: 9780415523165 Pages: 240 Price: U.K. £ 80.00
Abstract:
Common patterns of interactions are altered in the digital world and new
patterns of communication have emerged, challenging previous notions of what
communication actually is in the contemporary age. Typical modes of online
interaction encompass speech, writing, gesture, movement, gaze, and social
distance. This is nothing new, but here Sindoni asserts that all these modes
are integrated in unprecedented ways, enacting new interactional patterns and
new systems of interpretation among web users. These “non verbal” modes have
been sidelined by mainstream linguistics, whereas accounting for the
complexity of new genres and making sense of their educational impact is high
on this volume’ s agenda. Sindoni analyzes other new phenomena, ranging from
the intimate sphere (i.e. video chats, personal blogs or journals on social
networking websites) to the public arena (i.e. global-scale transmission of
information and knowledge in public blogs or media-sharing communities),
shedding light on the rapidly changing global web scenario.
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