‘It all begins with a teacher’: A multimodal critical discourse analysis of Singapore’s teacher recruitment videos

2021 ◽  
pp. 175048132199990
Author(s):  
Peter Teo
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Facial Expression ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Teacher Recruitment ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Background Music ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Ideal Teacher ◽  
Secondary Meaning

This study focuses on a series of videos aimed at teacher recruitment in Singapore and how they are used as an ideological tool for persuasion. By adopting a multimodal critical discourse analysis approach to focus on affect, it examines how these videos create and promulgate the ideology of an ideal teacher as one who is caring, encouraging and supportive of students. The analysis shows how affect is not only embodied in and performed by the primary protagonists in the video narratives through their action, facial expression, posture and speech. It is also evoked through various secondary meaning-making modes, such as focus, angle, lighting, background music and setting, through which the narratives unfold. More importantly, it demonstrates how affect is used not only as a means to arouse and engage viewers’ sensibilities but also as a persuasive strategy to manufacture and manage particular social and economic realities in contemporary society.

Discourse Approaches

2019 ◽  
pp. 212-220
Author(s):  
Johannes Angermuller ◽  
Raj Kollmorgen
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Discourse Studies

As a practice of meaning making in society, discourse points to important dimensions of social and historical change. This chapter discusses examples of discourse research on social transformation in Central and Eastern Europe. It shows how methods from linguistic, semiotic, and cultural theory can be used to account for a changing social order (e.g., how change is narrated in Russia during the perestroika period or how Eastern Germans are represented in Western media discourse after the reunification). Against a background in Discourse Studies, we put special emphasis on macrosociological views of discursive change, which one can find, for instance, in Foucault’s power/knowledge approach, Laclau/Mouffian hegemony analysis, and Critical Discourse Analysis. The chapter concludes by pointing out the strengths as well as the limits of discourse research, which is based on the idea that language not only represents social realities but, through representation, also contributes to creating them.

scholarly journals Signs of Colonial Discourse and their Psycho-Semiotic Significance

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shahzad-ul-Hassan Farooqi
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Colonial Discourse ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Sign Theory ◽  
Research Article ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
Linguistic Practices

Colonial discourse is defined as a “complex of signs and practices” (Ashcraft, Griffiths, & Tiffin, 1998, p.235). In the light of this statement this research article investigates following main questions. 1-What are those signs and practices which constitute colonial discourse? 2- How do they signify according to semiotic theory? This article is a philosophical endeavour to develop conclusive argument to determine the psycho-semiotic nature of those meaning making practices which form the very basis of the colonial discourse. The aim of this study is to establish a triangular link of the sign theory, psychological conditioning and colonial discourse. Fairclough’s (1995) triadic model of Critical Discourse Analysis has been used to analyse various linguistic practices of colonisers at Description—Interpretation—Explanation levels. After exemplifying from various texts, the study concludes that colonial signs are psychologically conditioned, discursively conventionalised and socially upheld linguistic practices which disseminate ideas they stand for. Hence, colonialism is not only a historical fact but also a linguistically and semiotically crafted phenomenon. The article lays down a vivid criterion which can serve for further analytical studies in the domain of colonial and post-colonial discourse.

Voicing the absented presence of blackness in Canada: a multimodal critical discourse analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilio Amideo
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Black People ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Specific Response ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
To Come

Abstract Canada makes of multiculturalism its trademark in a process caught between a (yet to come) full openness toward cultural and linguistic diversity, and the removal of an ambiguous collective memory rooted in racio-cultural violence. One that at different times in Canadian history considered Black people unwanted citizens, making of their experience an “absented presence” within the Canadian discourse. Drawing on Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, the aim of this essay is to investigate the retrieval of part of that absented presence through an exploration of the 2015 miniseries The Book of Negroes (dir. Clement Virgo) which traces the life story of the West African storyteller Aminata Diallo as she is captured, sold into slavery and then slowly regains her freedom. The essay focuses on the analysis of the different semiotic resources employed in the miniseries and on the way a reflection of their co-articulation contributes not only to the meaning-making potential of the narrative but also to a specific response in the audience. The multiple ‘languages’ of storytelling through which Aminata’s story unfolds emphasise the need for a rethinking of national belonging by way of privileging diasporic affiliations that reject the violence inherent in monolithic and appropriating discourses.

scholarly journals SYSTEMIC-FUNCTIONAL AND CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF ONLINE MATCHMAKING

2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-101
Author(s):  
Fábio Alexandre Silva Bezerra
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Social Bonds ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Life Choices ◽  
Concrete Material ◽  
New Era ◽  
Sexual Orientations ◽  
The World

In contemporary society, many are the genres and media used to create social bonds among people of the most different background, ages, classes and sexual orientations. In this context, the internet is occupying an ever increasing space in people’s everyday lives. This paper aims to demonstrate how language can be used to construe representations of the world that position people socially. Although the discourse of modern days seems to celebrate people’s individual life choices, overall results of the transitivity (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004; Martin; Matthiessen & Painter 2010) and discourse analysis (Caldas-Coulthard, 1997; Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999, Fairclough, 1989; Fairclough & Wodak, 1999; van Dijk, 1997) show that people are actually stimulated to find partners by carrying out concrete material actions. Additionally, and maybe contradictorily, the same people are expected to entrust abstract systems (Giddens, 1991) with the responsibility of finding these partners, thus revealing that the new era has impinged significant changes on relationships of intimacy.

Analyzing neoliberal discourse: An integrated dialectical-relational critical discourse analysis-discourse theory framework utilizing conceptual metaphor

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-170
Author(s):  
Marissa K. L. E
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Nodal Point ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Discourse Theory ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Primary Basis ◽  
Education Discourse

AbstractAn integrated Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)-Discourse Theory (DT) framework is proposed that utilizes the Dialectical-Relational (DR) approach from CDA as its primary basis and incorporates DT concepts of articulation and nodal point to further develop DR and thus enhance descriptions and analyses of the complex, shifting and contingent nature of meaning making in discourses of late modernity that impact the construction of social realities (logic) and subjectivity. This paper argues that the addition of the above DT concepts enhances the description and analysis of the dynamics of meaning making by focusing on shifting and contingent meanings present in discourses operating within and between particular social contexts as a means to specifically and systematically capture the influence of context-specific ideologies. Furthermore, using DR allows for the inclusion of the relative permanence of social structures in dialectical relation with processes of meaning making which avoids the risk of a radical contingency that DT potentially entails. The framework is demonstrated using conceptual metaphors in the context of Singapore higher education discourse to show how neoliberalism as a seemingly hegemonic phenomenon operates as a variegated mobile technology adapting to its specific context by manifesting context-specific meanings, thus reflecting characteristics of complexity, non-permanence and contingency.

scholarly journals Researching Shamanism in Contemporary Japan

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Rivadossi
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Media And Religion ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Multiple Discourses

This paper takes its cue from Massimo Raveri’s studies and interests, especially concerning Japanese shamanic practitioners and the relationship between media and religion. By further broadening his analysis with more recent data, this paper suggests how a study of contemporary Japanese shamanism could be undertaken, within the theoretical framework offered by critical discourse analysis. Through the suggested examination of the multiple discourses on shamans conducted in peripheral and central areas of the country, it would be possible to reach a better understanding of both shamanism and contemporary society, overcoming essentialist views.

scholarly journals The Role of Discourse and Text in the Construction of Organizational Identity

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-98
Author(s):  
Davide Bizjak
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Organizational Identity ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Social World ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
The Social

Functional approaches and practices can be seen as loci of knowledge production and preservation. The present paper provides a comprehensive reflection on the former by discussing in detail the concept of discourse and discourse analysis applied to organisational contexts. Indeed, language and discourse are the principal means by which institutions and organisations create their own social reality. With the aim to clarifying how the social world is constructed and construed through actions of intersubjective meaning-making processes and to avoid the emphasis placed only on micro-linguistic elements, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was introduced to raise the attention on the macro-social aspects of discourse within organisations.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document