scholarly journals Multimodal Discourse Analysis for teaching English as a Second Language

Author(s):  
Kawa Abdul–Kareem Sherwani, Et. al.

New technological developments have boosted the use of different modes or semiotic resources; social changes and developments, on the other hand, have changed the process of meaning making because discourse shapes and is shaped by social practices. Semiotic resources are used in communication (language, sound, gestures, facial expressions … etc) and this has impact and reflections on the methods of teaching. Literacy is not only about reading and writing, it rather means the ability to communicate through multiple modes. Hence, it is important to embed multimodality (the study of using multiple modes) in educational settings

SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 215824402110321
Author(s):  
Hesham Suleiman Alyousef

This qualitative study examined multimodal cohesive devices in English oral biology texts by eight high-achieving Saudi English-as-a-foreign-language students enrolled in a Bachelor of Science Dentistry program. A Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis (SF-MDA) of the textual and logical cohesive devices in oral biology texts was conducted, employing Halliday and Hasan’s cohesion analysis scheme. The findings showed that students used varied cohesive devices: lexical cohesion, followed by reference and conjunctions. Although ellipsis was minimally employed in the oral biology texts, its discipline-specific uses emerged: the use of bullet points and numbered lists that facilitate recall. The SF-MDA of cohesion in multimodal semiotic resources highlighted the processes underlying construction of conceptual and linguistic knowledge of cohesive devices in oral biology texts. The results indicate that oral biology discourse is interdisciplinary, including a number of subfields in biology. The SF-MDA of pictorial oral biology representations indicates that they include instances of cohesive devices that illustrate and complement verbal texts. The results indicate that undergraduate students need to be provided with a variety of multimodal high-cohesion texts so that they can successfully extend underlying conceptual and logical meaning-making relations.


2020 ◽  
pp. 146144562096692
Author(s):  
So Yoon Kim

This study examined the disability support offices (DSOs) websites of twelve US higher education institutions (HEIs) anchored in multimodal discourse analysis and genre analysis to examine how semiotic resources are deployed to describe DSO services on their websites and to determine the discursive functions of advertisement they perform. The DSO websites were within four clicks from HEI homepages but had inconsistent navigation paths, making it difficult to reach DSO websites. DSO websites were foregrounding promoting and branding the institutions rather than presenting the information about the services offered. This is achieved by using multimodal promotional rhetoric such as: (a) situating accessibility as central commodifiable attribute, (b) promoting the value of accessibility, (c) establishing the superiority of the institution, (d) constructing images of students with disabilities as empowered but dependent upon the DSO, and (e) situating students within a college community. Implications for DSO websites functioning as advertisements are also discussed.


SAGE Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 215824402094712
Author(s):  
Hesham Suleiman Alyousef

The use of cohesive devices in academic discourse not only improves the quality of writing but also enhances our learning experiences. This study aims to explain how the multimodal accounting discourse is constructed by postgraduate business students through the cohesive ties. Halliday and Hasan’s and Halliday’s cohesion analysis schemes were employed in the systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis (SF-MDA) of the cohesive devices in the multimodal accounting texts. The schemes are based on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) which suits the context of this study as it considers language as a social semiotic resource for making meaning. Its linguistic tools are capable of explaining the way we construct and make meanings. The SF-MDA findings showed the first and most frequently occurring cohesive device type in the orthographic texts was lexical cohesion, in particular repetition of the same lexical items, followed by reference and conjunctions. Lexical cohesive devices were higher in the tables than in the orthographic texts. Conjunctions were only employed in the orthographic texts to signal extension and enhancement relationships. One of the key features that characterize financial statements is the abundance of implicit hierarchically networked lexical ties that bind the separate lexical strings, thereby organizing the discourse of financial statements. The results contribute to our understanding of the complex multimodal meaning-making processes in accounting discourse.


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Inmaculada Fortanet-Gómez ◽  
Noelia Ruiz-Madrid

AbstractHumor is present in most instances of human to human interaction and has often been studied by discourse analysis (Long and Graesser 2009). These studies have taken several perspectives but have often ignored the multimodal aspect of humor even more if the genres selected have been in oral academic discourse. In this paper we focus on a genre that has rarely been studied, the conference plenary lecture. Taking as a theoretical model Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) we look at the semiotic resources employed by two senior researchers: one Spanish, Dr. Jose Manuel Blecua and one British, Dr David Crystal. They were plenary speakers in two different conferences. In their speeches Dr. Blecua dealt with Spanish as a Foreign language and Dr. Crystal with English as a Foreign language. Although there does not seem to have been any point of contact between them, their lectures show a number of similarities especially with regard to the semiotic resources they use in order to produce humor.


2020 ◽  
pp. 33-55
Author(s):  
Judit Háhn

Virtual exchange comprises online collaborative activities in facilitated, educational contexts across borders. This paper offers a multimodal approach to the study of social presence in students’ asynchronous online discourse in the context of virtual exchange. It draws on the Community of Inquiry model of online learning (Garrison 2017) and interprets social presence as the dynamic discursive process of social interaction and self-presentation. The data consists of screenshots collected in a closed Facebook group during the first assignment of a Czech-Finnish virtual exchange project in 2017. The study aims to explore how the method of multimodal discourse analysis can be used to describe the three dimensions of social presence. The students’ self-introductory posts, reactions and comments were examined in three modes of meaning-making: the linguistic, the visual and the action mode. The study offers a model for the qualitative multimodal discourse analysis of social presence construction in asynchronous social media interaction.


K ta Kita ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 352-357
Author(s):  
Janice Davita Oey

This research deals with multimodality or multimodal discourse analysis in analyzing the notion of beauty in a Youtube video. It aims at finding how an advertisement uses the multiple modes in constructing the meaning, which is the notion of beauty. For this research, the object of the analysis is Dove’s video advertisement entitled “Dove Real Beauty Sketches”, which was uploaded to the YouTube channel of Dove in 2013. The issue that Dove is trying to convey through the advertisement is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One’s perception of beauty can differ from another. If one person describe himself/herself as unattractive, other people may think that the person is actually attractive. Through this research, I want to find how that issue is constructed through the analysis of the multiple modes used in the advertisement. The multiple modes consist of the verbal and non-verbal expressions displayed by the female participants, Olivia, Melinda, Kela, and Florence. Keywords: advertisement, beauty, notion, multimodal discourse analysis


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Haili Feng

Lim (2019) states that one challenge for the researchers in multimodal discourse analysis is to describe and discuss the interplay across various semiotic resources. English micro-lectures, as a kind of popular and widespread teaching materials in the information age, are typical multimodal discourses involving multi-semiotic resources. This article adopts the systemic-functional synthetic framework for multimodal discourse analysis from Zhang Delu (2018) to explore the relationship of various modes involved in excellent English micro-lectures and further examine how the semiotic resources cooperate and interact to construct communicative meaning. By analyzing and interpreting the context of culture, the meaning, the lexico-grammar, the media and the substance systems of involved modes in micro-lectures, it proves that English micro-lectures demonstrate complicated intersemiosis and various modes cooperate in a perfect way in meaning construction. This comprehensive investigation of semiotic systems sheds light on teachers’ mode choice and teaching design in producing micro-lectures and students’ learning strategies of micro-lectures in the mobile-assisted learning environment.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 616
Author(s):  
Rizki Ananda ◽  
Siti Sarah Fitriani ◽  
Iskandar Abdul Samad ◽  
Andi Anto Patak

Drawing on a multimodality theory, this study attempted to investigate the various semiotic resources utilized by a giant Indonesian cigarette company, Sampoerna, and explore how these resources communicate meanings or messages in its billboard advertisements to persuade its potential customers to buy the product. The data were analyzed using Halliday’s systemic functional grammar focusing on ideational meta-function or also known as a representational function in multimodal discourse analysis. The findings revealed that the billboard advertisements were designed to persuade the audience to buy the advertised products implicitly through representational functions attained using narrative and conceptual processes. Whereas the former was realized by employing its typical sub-processes, actional and reactional processes, the latter employed its sub-processes such as classificational, analytical, and symbolic processes. Implicationally, this study has illuminated the possible application of systemic functional grammar within multimodal discourse analysis domain to investigate implicit message(s) conveyed by an advertisement.


2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Janina Wildfeuer

AbstractThis article is concerned with the analysis of multimodal filmic text from a formalfunctional perspective. It presents a new and integrative framework which has been developed on the basis of a formal description of coherence and structure in verbal discourse in order to be able to articulate in detail how inferential strategies and defeasible reasoning can be included as a foundation for making meaning in the analysis of multimodal discourse. The article will, on the one hand, present the mechanisms of this framework for examining the intersemiosis of the filmic resources and, on the other hand, demonstrate the adequacy of this analytical tool with the help of an example analysis of a sequence taken from the movie Vanilla Sky. It will thus outline how it is possible to organise filmic semiotic resources more systematically and to describe the entire meaning-making process on various levels of film interpretation.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document