Monika Bednarek
‘And they all look just the same’? A quantitative survey of television title sequences
This article describes the variation in title sequences for American television series (a sequence of moving images and sound at the beginning of a television series). Using a quantitative survey of 50 contemporary fictional television series, it explores key features of the television title sequence – such as length, credits, characters, sound and style – and relates these to its functional characteristics. In so doing, the article provides a synchronic snapshot of a significant contemporary cultural product that viewers regularly engage with and enjoy. The survey not only shows the variation inherent in these cultural products, but also pinpoints areas that are worth investigating more closely and in depth.
Martin Thomas
Evidence and circularity in multimodal discourse analysis
In the context of rapid theoretical development in multimodal discourse analysis, and of its growing interdisciplinary influence, it is crucial that those working in the field give due consideration to methodological rigour. The corpus-based approach described here offers a means of addressing some key methodological issues. Firstly, this approach provides a check on over- and under-interpretation and also reveals a more nuanced picture of data about specific genres than might be derived from even the closest observation of individual instances. Thus it helps avoid pitfalls associated with relying on hand-picked examples. Secondly, the semi-automated implementation of a multilayered annotation scheme, which separates the representation of layout from rhetorical structure, supports the empirical investigation of a variety of research questions, while minimizing the influence of the analyst on the data by delaying interpretation insofar as possible until it becomes unavoidable.
This article illustrates the corpus-based approach through a contrastive case study of one very visual genre, product packaging, with data taken from two locales, Taiwan and the UK. In so doing, issues of the selection of texts for inclusion and corpus design are addressed and the principles and practicalities involved in data preparation are discussed. Consideration is also given to the types of question which such an approach enables us to explore. In addition, since the data analyzed here are drawn from different languages and cultures, the present study sheds light on some issues of interest from the perspective of localization. Finally, some benefits of the approach are suggested, among which not least is that a stronger basis for the critique of designs in turn supports identification of opportunities for their improvement. This is not possible when the analysis is itself circular.
Li Wang, Pertti Alasuutari, and Jari Aro
Aesthetic and family frames in the online sharing of children’s birthday photos
This article reports on a social semiotic investigation into children’s birthday photo sharing and textual interaction in the public photo sharing website Flickr.com; the analysis shows that the aesthetic frame becomes more prominent in the online context. In other words, people share their family photos as a form of self-expression, and that can be seen in the semiotic organization of the verbal and visual texts they publish. However, the aesthetic frame is often entwined with the family frame both in the postings of the image publishers and in the comments that the photos gather. It could have been assumed that the aesthetic frame assumes a particularly dominant position on Flickr, which as a social media site specializes in publishing photographs and discussing their qualities. Since the family frame nevertheless retains an important role on Flickr, it can be expected that the same is true of more general social media services such as Facebook.
Veronika Kelly
Metaphors of resonance for visual communication design
This article discusses metaphors of resonance for visual communication design and the potential contribution that the concept of resonance makes with regard to enhancing a reader’s experience and engagement with design. The concept of resonance is indicated as a contributing factor to effective visual communications, however it is not adequately understood: resonance is elusive, predominantly described in terms borrowed from physics and acoustics and there is little input from design practitioners on the topic. To address this gap, the author conducted interviews with a purposive sample of designers about resonance in visual communication. This article discusses the interview findings in relation to conceptual metaphor theory. In this context, resonance is akin to a physical force, making physical contact and operating on the human body and its perceived boundaries. The author argues that metaphors of resonance that centre on the human body emphasize the participation and experience of readers in visual communications.
Ruth Wodak and Bernhard Forchtner
Embattled Vienna 1683/2010: right-wing populism, collective memory and the fictionalisation of politics
The victory of a Christian coalition over Ottoman forces besieging Vienna in 1683 marked the beginning of the end of the Ottoman presence in Central and Eastern Europe and the simultaneous rise of the Habsburg Empire in this region. Memories of these events still circulate in present-day Vienna and provide an emotional reservoir for anti-Turkish sentiments. Current tendencies to fictionalise politics support the dissemination of such anti-Turkish narratives in rather unconventional and hybrid genres such as comic-style booklets. In this article, the authors investigate the interplay of collective memories and this hybrid genre within the social context of the fictionalisation of politics through the test case of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), one of the most successful European right-wing populist parties. By combining multimodal analysis with the discourse–historical approach in critical discourse analysis, they illustrate the ways in which visuals enable the conveying of contradictory meanings through a discursive strategy of calculated ambivalence by blurring past and present, fiction and reality.
Terence Heng
Hungry ghosts in urban spaces: A visual study of aesthetic markers and material anchoring
The Hungry Ghost Festival is a month-long spiritual period celebrated and observed mostly by Chinese individuals, where it is believed that ancestral spirits are released from the netherworld to roam the earth. During this festival, various rituals of offering and burning are performed in simultaneously private and public ways to feed and appease these hungry ghosts. The offerings are left to the environment as ashes, wax and burn marks that scar and mark the landscape. This visual essay examines such activities in a particular suburban town centre in Singapore known as Teck Ghee Court. Through the photographs, the author proposes that the rituals and material practices are an act of material anchoring through the making of aesthetic markers in urban spaces. Individuals appropriate carefully planned public, commercial and residential spaces into temporary sites of performative spirituality and ethnicity. In doing so, they ‘anchor’ their ethnicities and identities to these spaces.