The operation of différance in a student-produced digital video: insights into differing and deferring signifier operations and relations in multimodal discourse

2021 ◽  
pp. 147035722110447
Author(s):  
Jason Ranker
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Digital Video ◽  
Multiple Modes ◽  
Multimodal Discourse Analysis ◽  
Multimodal Discourse

In this article, the author presents a multimodal discourse analysis of a student-produced video, drawing upon Jacques Derrida’s theorization of différance. He analyzes the film as a signifying chain, drawing specifically upon the differing and deferring aspects of différance in order to conceptualize the movement of signification in the video. The focus of his analysis is on how différance, as a constitutive force, splits and divides attempts to discursively construct a present through coordination of signifiers from across multiple modes. His application of différance illustrates how the present, as constructed in the focal video, is ill-defined and always blurred since presently occurring, visible, and audible signifiers in the video do not signify in and of themselves, but rather refer to past signifiers and anticipate future signifiers for their constitution as they engage the dynamic and complex operations of différance. This analysis adds to approaches to multimodal discourse analysis of student-produced videos by accounting for the interaction of visual, actional, bodily, and spoken signifiers, as well as the pedagogical implications for understanding how discursive agencies act upon student video-composers.

scholarly journals A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of the Notion of Beauty in “Dove Real Beauty Sketches”

K ta Kita ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 352-357
Author(s):  
Janice Davita Oey
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Multiple Modes ◽  
Multimodal Discourse Analysis ◽  
Multimodal Discourse

This research deals with multimodality or multimodal discourse analysis in analyzing the notion of beauty in a Youtube video. It aims at finding how an advertisement uses the multiple modes in constructing the meaning, which is the notion of beauty. For this research, the object of the analysis is Dove’s video advertisement entitled “Dove Real Beauty Sketches”, which was uploaded to the YouTube channel of Dove in 2013. The issue that Dove is trying to convey through the advertisement is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One’s perception of beauty can differ from another. If one person describe himself/herself as unattractive, other people may think that the person is actually attractive. Through this research, I want to find how that issue is constructed through the analysis of the multiple modes used in the advertisement. The multiple modes consist of the verbal and non-verbal expressions displayed by the female participants, Olivia, Melinda, Kela, and Florence. Keywords: advertisement, beauty, notion, multimodal discourse analysis

The sliding of the signified: multimodal sign operations in a youth-created experimental digital video

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Ranker
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Digital Video ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Digital Videos ◽  
Multimodal Discourse Analysis ◽  
Multimodal Discourse ◽  
School Classroom ◽  
Public School Classroom ◽  
Urban Public School ◽  
Artistic Quality

In this article, the author presents a multimodal discourse analysis of a digital video composed by five students (ages 11–12) in an urban, public-school classroom. The focal mockumentary video is distinctive in that it is difficult to interpret and has an artistic quality that turns the process of meaning-making back on itself, resisting the very idea of a single, determinable meaning. He examines this phenomenon as the sliding of the signified in the students’ video (as multimodal discourse), focusing on the ways in which the students tapped into discursive agencies that rupture meaning-making. In particular, he analyzes how visual and spoken signifiers are related or coordinated with one another across the film in the creation of multimodal discursive effects such as floating signifiers, networks of metonymic potential, and signifier condensation complexes. This study thus offers conceptualizations of multimodal discursive units that can be used to interpret and analyze the interactions of visual and spoken signifiers in films and digital videos.

scholarly journals Text Cohesion in English Scientific Texts Written by Saudi Undergraduate Dentistry Students: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Textual and Logical Relations in Oral Biology Texts

SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 215824402110321
Author(s):  
Hesham Suleiman Alyousef
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Bachelor Of Science ◽  
Lexical Cohesion ◽  
Multimodal Discourse Analysis ◽  
Multimodal Discourse ◽  
Cohesive Devices ◽  
Analysis Scheme

This qualitative study examined multimodal cohesive devices in English oral biology texts by eight high-achieving Saudi English-as-a-foreign-language students enrolled in a Bachelor of Science Dentistry program. A Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis (SF-MDA) of the textual and logical cohesive devices in oral biology texts was conducted, employing Halliday and Hasan’s cohesion analysis scheme. The findings showed that students used varied cohesive devices: lexical cohesion, followed by reference and conjunctions. Although ellipsis was minimally employed in the oral biology texts, its discipline-specific uses emerged: the use of bullet points and numbered lists that facilitate recall. The SF-MDA of cohesion in multimodal semiotic resources highlighted the processes underlying construction of conceptual and linguistic knowledge of cohesive devices in oral biology texts. The results indicate that oral biology discourse is interdisciplinary, including a number of subfields in biology. The SF-MDA of pictorial oral biology representations indicates that they include instances of cohesive devices that illustrate and complement verbal texts. The results indicate that undergraduate students need to be provided with a variety of multimodal high-cohesion texts so that they can successfully extend underlying conceptual and logical meaning-making relations.

Māori Gender Non-conforming Identity: Analysing the ‘Takatāpui’ Discourse

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Marino
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
First Century ◽  
Sex Characteristics ◽  
Analysis Framework ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
Multimodal Discourse Analysis ◽  
Multimodal Discourse ◽  
Decolonizing Methodologies

AbstractThis study aims to investigate the process of reconstruction of Māori postcolonial cultural identity in the twenty-first century which also passes through the reclamation and redefinition of ‘takatāpui’ notion. ‘Takatāpui’ is an umbrella term that nowadays indicates all the Māori with non-conforming wairua (spiritualities, gender identities), sexualities and sex characteristics. It is a culturally specific word which represents a form of intersectionality by identifying people as both Māori and queer.As a consequence of the increasing spread of the Internet, which has become a virtual place to construe identity and to promote the dissemination of ideas, a Multimodal Discourse Analysis is conducted on a corpus comprising 10 audiovisual texts fully retrieved from the web and exclusively produced by Māori takatāpui activists and/or containing Māori takatāpui activists’ self-narratives or claims.The corpus is analysed by applying a MMDA (Multimodal Discourse Analysis) framework based on Kress and van Leeuwen’s social semiotic framework (2006). The analysis is conducted also by taking into account Blommaert’s linguistic and ethnographic framework (2014).The findings of the analysis show the different strategies through which Māori identities are construed and conveyed reinforcing what the Māori scholar, Tuhiwai Smith (1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Dunedin: Zed Books Limited, 28), calls “a very powerful need to give testimony to and restore a spirit, to bring back into existence a world fragmenting and dying”.

Subverting superhero and meiga imaginaries in street art narrative Fenómenas do rural

2021 ◽  
pp. 136754942110032
Author(s):  
Beatriz Carbajal-Carrera
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Street Art ◽  
Multimodal Discourse Analysis ◽  
Multimodal Discourse ◽  
Narrative Patterns

Heroic narratives are often biased towards a conceptualization of the rural/urban difference that positions rural identities at the margins. In particular, superhero stories have traditionally offered a vision of heroism assumed to be male, urban and young. How can post-rural contexts shaped by migration contest these narrative patterns? This article examines the street narrative of Fenómenas do rural, which recognizes older female rural identities and casts them as superheroines. Through a multimodal discourse analysis, I examine its contestation of heroic patterns, its recognition of older female rural identities and its creation of affiliation opportunities for the Galician community. I argue that this narrative stands as a reflection of the rurban (rural + urban) and the glocal (global + local) elements that subverts pre-existing canons in the superhero and the meiga (‘witch’) mythology imaginaries.

An empirical study on multimodal discourse analysis of college English teaching in the context of new media

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Shuting Cao ◽  
Rui Chen ◽  
Haiyuan Liu ◽  
Ruolin Shi
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
New Media ◽  
Curriculum Reform ◽  
English Education ◽  
Ministry Of Education ◽  
College English ◽  
English Teaching ◽  
Multimodal Discourse Analysis ◽  
Multimodal Discourse

The main goal of college English education is to cultivate the students’ language ability of listening, speaking, reading and writing, and to promote the formation of individualized learning and autonomous ability of college students. At present, the new curriculum reform in our country has put forward a new educational requirement to college English teaching, which requires the innovation of college English teaching idea, and under the background of the development of new media, it proposes to use new media equipment to carry out teaching activities. However, college English education in our country is influenced by examination-oriented education mode, and the traditional education method is still used, which is not good for college students to improve their comprehensive quality of English. In view of this development situation, the Ministry of Education of China Based on the development of new media, a multimodal discourse analysis approach to college English education is proposed to enhance the level of College English teaching.

Social Semiotics of Gangstalking Evidence Videos on YouTube: Multimodal Discourse Analysis of a Novel Persecutory Belief System (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Lustig ◽  
Gavin Brookes ◽  
Daniel Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Classification Systems ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
Definitive Evidence ◽  
Multimodal Discourse Analysis ◽  
Multimodal Discourse ◽  
Naturalistic Setting

BACKGROUND Gangstalking refers to a novel persecutory belief system wherein sufferers believe that they are being followed, watched, and harassed by a vast network of people in their community who have been recruited as complicit perpetrators. They are frequently diagnosed as mentally ill, though they vehemently reject this formulation. Those affected by this belief system self-identify as targeted individuals. Targeted individuals seek to prove the veracity of their persecution and dispute the notion that they are mentally ill by posting videos online that purport to provide definitive evidence to substantiate their claims of harassment. OBJECTIVE The objective of the study was to characterize the multimodal social semiotic practices employed in gangstalking evidence videos. METHODS We assembled a group of 50 evidence videos posted on YouTube by self-identified targeted individuals. We performed a multimodal discourse analysis on a corpus of 50 YouTube vlogs. We employed a grounded theory approach to data analysis. RESULTS Targeted individuals accomplished several social and interpersonal tasks in the videos. They constructed their own identity as subjects of persecution and refuted the notion that they suffered from mental illness. They also cultivated positive ambient affiliation with viewers of the videos but manifested hostility to people who appeared in the videos. They made extensive use of multimodal deixis to generate salience and construe the gangstalking belief system. The act of filming itself was a source of conflict and served as a self-fulfilling prophecy; filming was undertaken to neutrally record hostility directed towards vloggers. However, the act of filming precipitated the very behaviours that they set out to document. Finally, the act of filming was also regarded as an act of resistance and empowerment by vloggers. CONCLUSIONS This data provides valuable insights into the social and linguistics construction of a novel persecutory belief system. The data is collected in a naturalistic setting and is not influenced by interviewers or clinicians, which may influence the disclosures of those affected in clinical settings. It demonstrated that interpersonal concerns figured prominently for those affected by this belief system and they constructed various subjects as either sympathetic or hostile. They created positive ambient affiliation with viewers of the videos. This study found that vloggers used multimodal deixis to construct the salience of the gangstalking belief system. The videos also highlighted the Derridean concept of differance, wherein meaning of polysemous signifiers is deferred without definitive resolution. This may have important clinical ramification in communicating with people and patients suffering from persecutory belief systems. Clinicians working with adherents to persecutory belief systems may consider stepping away from the traditional true/false dichotomy historically endorsed by psychiatric classification systems and focus on the fundamental ambiguity inherent in semiotic systems generally and in persecutory belief systems specifically.

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