The article focuses on academic presentations created with the help of multimedia programmes. The presentation is regarded as a special form of new academic knowledge representation. An academic ...presentation is explored as a multimodal phenomenon due to the fact that different channels or modes are activated during its perception. Data perception constitutes a part of the context which in itself is a semiotic event involving various components (an addresser, an addressee, the message itself, the channel of communication and the code). The choice of the code and the channel depends on different factors (type of the audience, the nature of the message, etc). In this way, the information for non-professionals will be most likely presented through visualization with the help of infographics (schemes, figures, charts, etc). Talking about the professional audience the speaker may resort to visualization to a lesser degree or he may not use it at all. His message will be transmitted only with the help of verbal means, which will not prevent the audience from perceiving and understanding new knowledge correctly. The presentation regime of rapid successive slide show may be regarded the heritage of ‘clip thinking’ which is characterized by a non-linear, simultaneous way of information perception. At the present stage of technology development visualization is becoming the most common means of transmitting information in academic discourse, due to peculiarities of data perception by the man of today.
This article explores the possibility of translating stereotypical language markers, from Japanese (source language) into Romanian (target language). The case study is conducted on a Japanese comic ...book (manga) titled Rurōni Kenshin -Meiji Kenkaku Roman Tan-, analysed in terms of pragmatic sense conveyed through the translations of certain deictics and appellatives used to differentiate between the two identities assumed by the main character. The translation compromises oftentimes required due to the lack of pragmatic equivalence lead to loss of pragmatic meaning, blurring out the differences in the personalities of the main character.
Reconsideration of Hymes' concept of communicative competence within a multimodal perspective implies that learners of a foreign language should develop a metalanguage that enables them to talk about ...how semiotic resources are co-deployed in specific texts and to relate their insights to these texts' contexts of situation and culture. This article reports on how research into multimodality, developed within Halliday's systemic functional framework, has been integrated into a university syllabus for text studies in English through a specific course designed to achieve this goal. In other words, students engaged in text analysis activities using analytical tools that guided them in the exploration of the complex array of semiotic resources that contribute to a text's meaning, but within a wider-ranging syllabus whose ultimate goal is to promote overall communicative competence. The article describes instruments for multimodal text analysis and sample materials created for the course. It then draws conclusions about the feasibility and benefits of an approach to text studies in English that fosters multimodal communicative competence, which naturally has an important metacommunicative component as it encourages reflection on texts.
The aim of this article is the study of correlation of verbal and non-verbal (audial) components of the screen speech in polycode-multimodal texts. The eliminating, description and analysis of its ...features in a concrete text are also studied. The main bulk of the study is held on the fiction and non-fiction film texts at the level of several shots. The study progress is illustrated through the analysis of drama “Loveless” and film “Earth: One Amazing Day”. The research showed that verbal and non-verbal components enter structural-semiotic relations (of interdependence and determination), which widens the semantics of the text, the simulated reality gaining volume. In the conclusion of the article the perspectives of further studies of syncretic texts in relation to the implementation of verbal and non-verbal components are stated.
This article examines the cultural resilience of the Chinese slash fanfiction subculture. Popular among Chinese youth, the writing and reading of slash are subjected to increasingly stringent ...regulations due to changes in the political environment. Drawing from the theoretical framework of minor transnationalism, the current study situates the development of the Chinese slash community in the context of post-socialist reform and globalization, arguing that slash fanfiction is a form of non-institutional, border-crossing cultural practice that challenges orthodox heteronormativity in nationalistic discourses. Foregrounding the double-edge-sword role of digital platforms, this article dissects the cultural resilience of the Chinese slash community—manifested as various strategies in keeping the viability of their cultural practices, including cultural enclosure, border-crossing platform-switching, and social media activism. This article contributes to the study of subcultures by bringing a transnational perspective that focuses on continuous, resilient cultural practices in negotiations of alternative cultural and political agendas. Methodologically, it also contributes to social media ethnographic research by testing out a comprehensive toolkit that combines close reading with computational text-mining and visual network analysis in the analysis of multimodal social media discourses.
The article describes the content of the screen “language”, which is one of the ways to record the screen text, similar to the writing. The screen “speech” is scrutinized as the contamination of ...semiotically heterogeneous units in space-time continuum of the screen, as well as its usage in polycode-multimodal texts. The goal of this article is to single out, describe and analyse the screen “language” peculiarities embodied in the screen “speech”. The main bulk of the research is dedicated to the study of the selected material at the level of screenshots without regard to their syntagmatic organization and rhythmic stratification.
This article presents a study of how teenage immigrant students, newly arrived in Norway, constructed themselves discursively through a number of identity texts. Drawing on theories from New Literacy ...Studies, Critical Discourse Analysis, and Social Semiotics, we analyzed a corpus of 97 multimodal identity texts. The study aimed to explore how the students contributed to their personal discursive construction in a society that was new to them. Our study showed that, while struggling with acquiring the dominant language, the immigrant students demonstrated linguistic and semiotic skills and talents. By analyzing the students' use of linguistic and visual resources, we identified three main categories of identity construction in the students' texts - spatial identity, relational identity, and functional identity. The analysis suggested that, in their identity work, the immigrant students simultaneously internalized and challenged dominant discourses of the globalized society.
The article considers the specificity of precedent proper names as universal value-based standards and cultural symbols in the texts of Russian political advertisement. The axiological aspect is at ...the core of the pragmatic impact made by political advertising on the target audience. The research material involves political advertising texts issued during presidential and parliamentary campaigns in Russia in 1993–2018. The author distinguishes between the notions of ‘standard’ and ‘symbol’ as ways of conveying value-based meanings. In the first case, it is the connotative use of proper names and the “rating scale” of evaluation that matter the most. In the second case, both denotative and connotative ways of using precedent names are possible while the rating features are optional. Moreover, unlike names-standards, symbolic names express a particular idea implicitly, not explicitly. Precedent names with value meanings can be rendered both verbally and by means of precedent visual phenomena having an associative link with onomastic units. A significant role in forming value-based connotations is played by the context in which proper names are used. The study has allowed to reveal the following axiological categories represented by precedent names and non-verbal signs: standards of hero, heroic deed, creator, scientist, positive traits of character and beauty; symbols of heroism, patriotism, Russian culture and art. It is demonstrated that proper names connected with the latter three values are most frequent in Russian political advertising texts. A special role is played by names associated with the Great Patriotic War and space exploration as well as names conveying orthodox values.
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