ABSTRACTThis article investigates deixis-based chronotopic framing across a corpus of 90 songs selected based on their top-ranking positions on the UK song charts over the period of 8 years. The present study combines some tools in linguistic approach to genre analysis and some concepts drawn from pragmatics and Critical Discourse Analysis, as an analytic framework. Quantitative and qualitative focus was laid on ideologically coded thematic leitmotifs and chronotopic interplay through spatio-temporal deictic patterns across the case-study lyrics. It was found that (...) there are significant points of commonality between the lyrics in terms of thematic strands as well as chronotope-bounded deictic features which warrants the classification of popular songs as a verbally distinct genre with its own ideologically charged discursive practices characterised by political apathy, and which can in part explain the target audience's uptake of this type of songs. (shrink)

As leadership discourses in higher education are increasingly being mediated online, texts previously reserved for staff are now being made available in the public domain. As such, these texts become accessible for study, critique and evaluation. Additionally, discourses previously confined to the written domain are now increasingly multimodal. Thus, an approach is required that is capable of relating detailed, complex multimodal discourse analyses to broader sociocultural perspectives to account for the complex meaning-making practices that operate in online leadership discourses. For (...) this purpose, a digital multimodal discourse approach is proposed and illustrated via a small-scale case study of the online leadership discourse of an Australian university. The analysis of two short video texts demonstrates how a digital multimodal discourse perspective facilitates the identification of key multimodal systems used for meaning-making in online communication, how meaning arises through combinations of semiotic choices, and how the results of multimodal discourse analysis using digital technology can reveal larger sociocultural patterns – in this case, divergent leadership styles and approaches as reflected in online discourse, at a time of immense change within the higher education sector. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhen Manchester United Football Club publicly announced the signing of Alexis Sanchez in 2018, it was done through a short video that purported to demonstrate the rich traditions and...

ABSTRACT When Manchester United Football Club publicly announced the signing of Alexis Sanchez in 2018, it was done through a short video that purported to demonstrate the rich traditions and history of the club, its deep connection with its fanbase, and the strength of its support. However, locating this video within the broader social order where elite football clubs like MUFC essentially operate as for-profit corporations shows how it functions as an instantiation of the market-oriented discourse and rhetoric that has (...) penetrated sport in general. Taking up a Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies perspective, and via an analysis of the semiotics of sound, intertextuality, and the visual, this article shows how MUFC positions itself sympathetically and in so doing conceals its pursuit of profit. It shows how values of solidarity, organicity, and camaraderie are communicated and associated with MUFC and how the viewer is structured into identifying with MUFC instead of supporters as a collective group. Finally, it discusses how these tropes are aestheticized whilst outwardly claiming to deny that very pursuit, thereby masking the reconstrual of club-supporter relations as fundamentally exploitative brand–consumer relations. (shrink)

Taking the example of two 1960s popular spy films this paper explores how social semiotics can make a contribution to the analysis of film music. Followingother scholars who have sought to create inventories of sound meanings to help us break down the way that music communicates, this paper explores how wecan draw on the principles of Hallidayan functional grammar to present an inventory of meaning potentials in sound. This provides one useful way to describe thesemiotic resources available to composers to (...) allow them to communicate quite specific ideas, attitudes and identities through combinations of different sounds and sound qualities, by presenting them as systems of meaning rather than as lists of connotations. Here we apply this to the different uses of music and sound in Dr No and The Ipcress Files which allows us to show how we can reveal different ideologies of spying. (shrink)