Discursive Internet-Personality in Multimodal Context (original) (raw)

This abstract introduces the notion of discursive Internet-personality defined as a subject of motivated, goal-oriented communicative interaction that presupposes use of Internet technologies to create multimodal texts that trigger the recipients' cognitive and emotional mental processes governing their interpretation within some axiological/ideological framework. Putting together ideas and instruments of multimodal linguistics, it demonstrates analysis techniques for interpreting multimodal texts instantiated by a tweet from Donald Trump. The results show that using semiotic affordances of different modes the Internet-personality produces multimodal tropes, which serve as arguments in multimodal argumentation as well as means of emotional contagion of the recipients.