Search results for "Modality"

Individual and Collaborative Semiotic Work in Document Design

2017

This article examines the concepts of agency, transformation and transduction in the context of document design. These concepts have been previously used to describe communicative actions and sign-making among individuals: whereas agency focuses on the individual’s capabilities as a sign-maker, transformation and transduction describe how individuals transform meanings within one mode of communication or from one mode to another. Organizational communication, however, is rarely an individual effort, particularly in corporate settings: producing multimodal documents that communicate on behalf of entire organizations, such as annual reports, constitutes a collaborative effort involving a vari…

Crossing Modalities: A Cognitive Semantics Perspective on Quoting

2015

Elaborating on Talmy (2007a, forthcoming) and Lampert (2013, 2014), this follow- up study probes into quoting as an attention-and modality-sensitive phenomenon at the interface of speech and writing, taking inaugural addresses from Kennedy to Obama as cases in point. Lexicalized to redirect some attention from a quotation’s referential content to concomitants closely associated with it, quotatives medium-specifically prime speech-internal properties of their targets, animating the ‘other voice’ through prosodic and gestural prompts in face-to-face interactions, while figural prompts demarcate verbatim citations in print. Quotations from pre-scripted videotaped presidential inaugurals reveal…

Constructing female identities through feminine hygiene TV commercials

2009

Abstract In this paper we report the results of a qualitative multimodal analysis of a corpus of Spanish and British TV ads featuring female hygiene products such as tampons, liners and sanitary towels/pads. We contend that advertisers of menstruation-related products employ a wide range of strategies to convey both overt information about the products advertised, as well as to – and more importantly – indirectly transmit stereotypical beliefs of women which inevitably helps reproduce and sometimes perpetuate a gender-biased type of discourse ( Holmes and Marra, 2005 ). Crook's (2004) distinction between the product-claim and the reward dimension in ads has been taken as the starting point …

Sense Activation Triggering in English Epistentials: Attention Distribution, Contextual Modulation of Meaning, and Categorization Issues

2015

Drawing on Talmy’s forthcoming The Attention System of Language and elaborating on a series of previous studies, this paper addresses the interrelation of attention distribution, contextual modulation of meaning, and categorization issues in the area of evidentiality and epistemic modality Adopting a corpus-based approach, it will investigate how the default salience levels of evidential and epistemic semantic components in so-called epistentials (linguistic items that syncretistically represent evidential and epistemic components) can be raised, lowered, or even inhibited under the impact of immediately adjacent items that themselves associate evidential or epistemic semantic components (i…

Book review : David Machin (ed.), Visual Communication

2016

Languaging in Ultima Thule: Multilingualism in the Life of a Sami Boy

2008

Abstract In this paper we investigate multilingualism as a phenomenon which pervades different social and cultural levels but is manifested in the everyday life of multilingual individuals. As an illustration, we examine multilingualism from the perspective of a young Sami boy, Ante, and explore how different languages function as a complex – but at times problematic – set of resources for him. To capture the complexity and fluidity in the relationships between various languages in his life, we base our theorising on such concepts as ‘linguistic resources’, ‘heteroglossia’ and ‘languaging’. With the help of multimodal data we examine how the linguistic resources present in Ante's daily life…

Clausal coordination in Finnish Sign Language

2016

This paper deals with the coordination of clauses in Finnish Sign Language (FinSL). Building on conversational data, the paper first shows that linking in conjunctive coordination in FinSL is primarily asyndetic, whereas in adversative and disjunctive coordination FinSL prefers syndetic linking. Secondly, the paper investigates the nonmanual prosody of coordination: nonmanual activity is shown both to mark the juncture of the coordinand clauses and to draw their contours. Finally, the paper addresses certain forms of clausal coordination in FinSL that are sign language-specific. It is suggested that the sign language-specific properties of coordination are caused both by the fact that signe…

Spelling out consequences : conditional constructions as a means to resist proposals in organisational planning process

2016

Organisational planning processes often materialise as a series of meetings, where the future of the organisation is jointly discussed and negotiated as a part of local decision-making sequences. Using conversation and discourse analytical approaches, this article investigates how proposals concerning the future can also be resisted by employing a specific device, a conditional construction ( if X, then Y). The data for the study originate from a city organisation, whose customer services are being developed. The results show how the conditional constructions work in two interrelated ways. First, by introducing a problematic hypothetical situation, they outline the undesirable consequences…

Students’ Interpretations of a Persuasive Multimodal Video About Vaccines

2021

The present study investigated students’ (N = 404) interpretations of the main message and use of modes in a persuasive multimodal video on vaccines. It also examined whether students’ topic knowledge, language arts grades, and self-identified gender were associated with their interpretations. Students analyzed a YouTube video in which two entertainers demonstrated the importance of vaccinating children. Students’ interpretations of the usefulness of vaccines varied in terms of quality of reasoning, which was associated with students’ topic knowledge. Notably, many students’ interpretations of the use of modes were incomplete, or they did not even mention certain modes in their response. Th…

Handling knowledge: Using classroom materials to construct and interpret information requests

2015

Abstract This article contributes to the recent conversation analytic interest in exploring the mechanisms of action formation and ascription by investigating how embodied interactional practices involving material objects relate to the organization of social action. Using as data information request sequences in student–student interaction, the study highlights the material nature of an interactional context and examines how students orient in talk and by bodily-visual means to their and their co-conversants’ textual documents during individual task work. Sequential analyses illustrate how the manual handling of such everyday learning materials as handouts and tasks sheets is not only an i…