Multimodal metaphors: from language as a condition to text to the notion of texture as a meaning-making semiotic resource (original) (raw)
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Rev. Estud. Ling, 2020
n this paper, we attempt to provide some ways of thinking about text, relating it to the concept of metaphors, multimodality and texture. Our aim is to develop new insights in meaning making and communication more generally, by bringing examples of memes; a relatively new genre, often seen on social media posts. To do so, we discuss the notion of text (HALLIDAY; HASAN, 2002; BEAUGRANDE, 1997; KRESS, 2010) and then, we discuss texture as a semiotic resource for the production of texts and its metaphors (DJONOV; VAN LEEUWEN, 2011). To exemplify some concepts and categories, we explore memes, seeking to understand their constitution as well as their qualities and potential meanings of visual textures deployed in the text to make meaning material through multimodal metaphors.
Multimodal figuration in internet memes
Metaphorik.de, 2023
Internet memes have become an essential part of Internet-based communication in recent years. Considering the importance of figuration of language, instances of figuration in Internet memes are no surprise. Understanding how multimodal figuration in memes function is essential to comprehend memes in general. Thus, in this paper, I will look at the role that figurative language plays in memes and how it functions. To do so, I will begin with Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) before shifting to multimodal cases of metaphor. I will also examine the case of multimodal metonymy and multimodal simile to determine how each figure functions in Internet memes, highlighting the importance of figurative combinations. Early results showed that figuration in memes is often combined (e.g., simile and metaphor), leading to categorization issues when studying figuration and multimodal figuration in Internet memes.
Multimodality in memes. A cyberpragmatic approach
Analyzing Digital Discourse: New Insights and Future Directions [Eds. Patricia Bou-Franch and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich. Palgrave Macmillan], 2018
In this chapter, a corpus of 100 instances of a specific type of meme, image macro (the one typically made up of one top and one bottom stretch of text and a picture in-between), is analyzed in its multimodal quality, specifically in search of different categories that these memes might fit into depending on the relationship existing between picture and text and its impact on the quality of the eventual interpretation. An underlying assumption in the chapter, broadly within a cyberpragmatic framework (Yus, 2011), is that different text-picture combinations will have an impact on eventual relevance by yielding different balances of cognitive effects and mental effort, the latter sometimes compensated for by an offset of additional cognitive effects in the shape of implications.
Nina-Maria Klug and Hartmut Stöckl, eds, Handbuch Sprache im multimodalen Kontext [The Language in Multimodal Contexts Handbook]. Linguistic Knowledge series, pp. 241-260. , 2016
Over the past decades, metaphor has come to be seen as a trope that governs thought, not just language. A consequence of accepting this view is that its mani-festations should be examined in semiotic modes other than language alone. Re-search of non-verbal metaphor has hitherto mainly focused on its role in gesturing and in visuals. This chapter provides an overview of issues that deserve attention in the investigation of pictorial (or: visual) metaphor, and of multimodal metaphor involving visuals. These issues include: monomodal versus multimodal metaphor; identifying non-verbal metaphor; creative versus structural metaphor; diegetic versus extradiegetic source domains; metaphor in static versus dynamic discourses; metaphor and genre; metaphor and other tropes.
Locating the Semiotic Power of Multimodality
Written Communication, 2005
This article reports research that attempts to characterize what is powerful about digital multimodal texts. Building from recent theoretical work on understanding the workings and implications of multimodal communication, the authors call for a continuing empirical investigation into the roles that digital multimodal texts play in real-world contexts, and they offer one example of how such investigations might be approached. Drawing on data from the practice of multimedia digital storytelling, specifically a piece titled “Lyfe-N-Rhyme,” created by Oakland, California, artist Randy Young (accessible at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfFg8zNkXZM), the authors detail the method and results of a fine-grained multimodal analysis, revealing semiotic relationships between and among different, copresent modes. It is in these relationships, the authors argue, that the expressive power of multimodality resides.
Metaphor and Multimodality in Meaning-Making
Revista Linguagem em Foco, 2019
When talking with people face to face, we usually complement verbal language with gestures, facial expressions and sometimes images and sounds present in the speech scene, which constitutes multimodality. When we write to absent people, we can recover multimodal resources employing what Greeks called "didaskalía". We, human beings, are the only creatures in the planet able to refer in absence. We can talk about a horse – which lives in a farm – in our living room. In doing so we trigger pre-existing multimodal senses from our addressee's long-term memory, related to its shape (image), its whinny (hearing), its strength (touch). When we use a metaphor as my cousin is a horse with his girlfriend, we intend to focus mainly on the horse strength, blending this aspect to the way he acts (physically or psychologically) towards his girlfriend. Our aim is, therefore, to discuss multimodal resources for metaphorical meanings, multimodal constructions in advertising discourse an...