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English media idioms of US confrontations across cultures: the Charleston Massacre – white supremacy vs African American dignity
No full textThe Need for Integrated Methodology – The National Museum of African American History and Culture
No full textAbstract: For semiotically complex topics of investigation, such as museums, the need
arises for an integrated analytical approach that enables the researcher to study the
relationship between its different components and their possible social significance. The
National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), on the National
Mall in Washington (DC), next to the Washington Monument, which marks the
culmination of decades of efforts and struggles to commemorate African American
history, is a case in point. A major representational objective of the museum is to rescue
generations of black people from anonymity by showing how ingenious and resilient the
people who endured slavery were, and how optimism, hope and spirituality – the typical
US values – define African American culture as well. In order to investigate the interplay
and evaluate the synergy of the multi-layered communicative dimensions of the
NMAAHC, which is the major objective of this observational study, an integrated
methodological approach was required. The resources of multimodal discourse analysis
were thus integrated with the fine-grained tools of the Appraisal Framework for the
verbal components, and with insights from museum studies. The socio-cognitive
implications of the data of these observational analyses were discussed in the light of
the relatively recent and ongoing efforts to reconsider USA history through the lens of
the African American experience
Black stories matter – Liverpool International Slavery Museum and multimodal representations of controversial heritage
No full textIn the light of the relatively recent efforts and teaching programmes to reshape the study of
history both from a more comprehensive perspective and through a non-white lens, the opening
of Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum (ISM) in 2007 represented a milestone. Both the
ISM in the UK and the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC),
which opened in Washington, DC, in 2016, foregrounded a new way of representing the challenging legacy of slavery. Yet, neither the imperialist/colonialist perspective, with its dire aspects, nor the emphasis on the enslaved people as victims to be pitied and redressed, are prioritized; the focus is rather on their individual identities as resourceful and resilient human
beings and on their past and recent achievements. Such complex and multifaceted messages
are conveyed through a plurality of artefacts and interactive exhibitions and videos which,
especially in the case of the NMAAHC, unfold in an iconic architectural structure. One major
representational objective is to unveil longstanding biases and omissions in the narration of
history as it is traditionally organized in the school curricula. From a multimodal discourse
analysis perspective, the present study investigates how the ISM’s poly-social-media communication modes manage to engage visitors, through the synergy of (virtual) artefacts, verbal
narratives of slavery, visuals and music that dynamically shape the contemporary semantics of
the new emerging racial literacies, and attempt to promote change at societal level
Corpus and Language Variation in English Research -CLAVIER Research Centre. Member of the research unit of the University of Calabria on linguistic variation in English and the related methodologies. The research unit is an inter-university network with five other universities in Southern Italy (Bari, Catania, University of Campania, Naples Federico II, Palermo) and with two international affiliates (University of Nottingham, UK; University of Szczecin, Poland).
No full textGroup members share a common research interest in linguistic variation in English mainly concerning the dimensions of diaphasia, diamesia and diastratia, and how these interact with each other in various ways. The investigation of diaphasic variation, as a situational function of context and of discursive contents, is particularly oriented to the analysis of functional linguistic varieties used in specific communication domains where the mediation of specialized discourse takes place. Research results on specialized discourses, genres and knowledge have been presented at several CLAVIER conferences by members of the unit.
The analysis of diamesic variation linked to the medium adopted in the realization of diaphasic variation is an integral part of the group’s research, allowing for a more careful examination of the discursive peculiarities determined by both traditional communication media and the more advanced ones, such as Internet-based technologies and social media. Further research areas: 1) intercultural communication and its socio-psycholinguistic aspects, plurilingualism and the role of the English language in traditional multilingual contexts and in those emerging as a result of phenomena such as mobility and globalization; 2) the functional role of discourse in the valorisation of socio-scientific aspects of the local Mediterranean culture, and the subsequent linguistic mediation of identity formation and its perception in national and international contexts. Methodologies: quantitative and qualitative, critical discourse analysis, multimodal analysis of digital texts, the discourse-historical approach, genre analysis, pragmatic analysis supported by corpus linguistics
Pragmatic relevance of lexico-grammar choices in EU legal documents.
No full textThe present study focuses on the communicative relevance of lexical choices in the documents of the European Union Committee of the Regions (CoR) and of other related bodies within a pragmalinguistic perspective. The Committee of the Regions is a EU advisory assembly whose function is to issue opinions on proposals for Community legislation which are closest to the citizen interests. It is thus a voice at the heart of the EU which aims at increasing the participation of European regions in community life.Our corpus consists in 50 documents pertaining in areas affecting local and regional interests, such as education, youth, culture, health, social and economic cohesion. They are classified as proposals, opinions and recommendations according to their identities, which are situated along a graded cline of increasing intensity – or, in Sbisà's terms (2001) along a scale of varying ‘illocutionary force and degrees of strength in language use'. Our analysis investigates the value of some lexico-grammatical aspects and communicative/ rhetorical strategies of these legal texts within the reference Group Knowledge (van Dijk 2001). In particular we examined the functions of weasel words, of lexico-grammar options and of solidarity or hedging along a cost-benefit scale. Our hypothesis is that such proposals, opinions and recommendations aim at creating a holistic we to construe a common ground of interests, within the predictable constraints of legal intercourses, shared by both the sender and the receiver of the messages. Frequently occurring lexical items are, among others: welcome, ensure, strengthen, aid. To stress urgency, generate empathy, emphasize needs and endorse value-positions are the recognizable perlocutionary acts of such semantic/pragmatic choices, which not infrequently rely on nominalization (Gotti 1991) and bring into play different communicative purposes and functions.Tools for analysis were mainly taken from the domain of pragmalinguistics, which revisited fundamental contributions to the theory of meaning and communication by Wittgenstein 1953, Austin , 1962, Searle 1969, Leech 1983, Grice1989, providing a comprehensive perspective (Mey 1993; Verschueren 1999, 2006). When necessary, such tools were partially ‘blended' with additional instruments from other Evaluative/Appraisal frameworks (Hunston &Thompson 2000; Martin & White 2005). Our paper will provide both qualitative and quantitative data to support our hypothesis, and will offer suggestions for further research
CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND POSITIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS – COMMONALITIES AND DIFFERENCES
Full text linkThis study outlines an integrated new perspective on the relationship between
critical discourse analysis (CDA) and positive discourse analysis (PDA). CDA typically
attempts to unveil the uses of language and semiosis in the service of power and is best
known for its foci on ideologically driven discrimination (gender, ethnicity, class, and
related social variables). Yet, CDA has not offered accounts of alternative forms of social
organisation, nor of social subjects, other than by implication (Kress 1996). Concisely,
‘critical’ in CDA does not equate to ‘neutral critical thinking’, but to negative criticism of
the power/language relationship.
A different orientation is provided, among others, by Kress (2000) and Martin
(2004). Martin’s perspective on “language and semiosis [...is] oriented not so much to
deconstruction as to constructive social action, through PDA [2004:180-181]”. Other
instantiations of PDA, where the potential of linguistic and discourse analysis for facilitating
positive intervention in social issues is considered, can be found in Macgilchrist (2007),
Bartlett (2012) and Rogers (2017). More specifically, the former investigated strategies for
propelling marginal discourses into the mainstream news media, while central notions in
Bartlett’s and Rogers’s vision are to give voice and access to dominant discourses to less
privileged, racialised social groups, and then to re-shape such discourses. Largely, topic
selection makes the major difference between CDA and PDA: by selecting only
discriminatory discourses to be deconstructed, there is no scope for positive critical
thinking, whereas, from a PDA orientation, new transformative meanings can emerge
“Edusemiotic pathways in an iconic museum text: the African American experience”
No full textSince its opening in 2016, the National Museum of African American History and Culture has surpassed 6 million visits, becoming a monument to the African American identity. The representational emphasis of the NMAAHC lies on how resilient the African American people who endured slavery were, though museumgoers cannot avoid witnessing racial violence and the unvarnished truth of slavery. One objective of the NMAAHC is to unmask previously normalised histories of the exploitation of slavery and racial subjugation, as museumgoers progress along its awareness-raising pathways. Unlike many Western museums, the NMAAHC does not display the spoils of slavery and exploitation as valuable artifacts, but reveals and exposes their quality as products of forced labor. The present study aims to investigate aspects of this rich and challenging heritage, in particular the multi-layered communicative dimension of the NMAAHC, with its synergy between its artefacts and the accompanying verbal explanations and comments, which manage to resemiotize (pedagogically) apparently innocuous objects as the products of forced labour and endeavour to promote societal change. The architectonic structure of the museum visually conveys the novelty of its approach and realizes the identity of museums as ‘spatial texts’ and loci of dialogic interactivity with explicit educational-through-semiotic purposes. Visitors are helped to search for the (hi)stories of their families, record their stories/emotional reactions and realize how essential their individual/family stories are to understanding/demystifying the narrative of African American history and heritage. A broad (edu)semiotic approach (Danesi 2010; Olteanu and Campbell 2018; Semetsky and Campbell 2018) with insights from museum studies (Ravelli 2006; Ravelli and Heberle 2016) and multimodal discourse analysis (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001, 2006), is adopted for this investigation. The considerations/implications of this exploration are discussed in light of the ongoing efforts to find new ways to promote racial literacies and societal change in the US, also by unmasking the existing unequal power relations, which the pandemic has amplified, as denounced by the Black Lives Matter movement
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