Instagram and intermodal configurations of value

This paper explores how ideological positions associated with food are construed multimodally in Instagram posts produced by everyday social media users. Discourse about food choices is an important site for revealing syndromes of values that characterise the ideological positions that are embedded in everyday life. An example of a highly valued food is the avocado which is an important bonding icon in semantic domains from veganism, clean eating, keto/low-carb eating, ethical/sustainable eating to fitness. We explore how values associated with avocado toast are enacted intermodally through the interplay of meanings made in the images, captions, and tags in a corpus of 64,585 Instagram posts tagged #avotoast. The study draws on previous social semiotic work on visual intersubjectivity and everyday aesthetics in social photography (Zhao and Zappavigna 2018a) to interpret the visual meanings made in these posts. It also draws on research into intermodal coupling (image-text relations) and ambient affiliation (online social bonding) (Zappavigna 2018) to understand how different values are construed in these texts. A modified grounded theory approach is used to isolate and exemplify the visual and textual features at stake, and then to explore ideological positionings through close multimodal analysis. A particularly interesting pattern in the corpus is the interaction of aesthetic and moralising discourses. For instance, a regulative metadiscourse realised through hashtags is used to project an instructional discourse about how to eat and what is considered ethical, sustainable, and nutritious food consumption. Rather than being directly encoded as judgement of behaviour these assessments tended to be expressed as appreciation of food items and their aesthetics or worth (e.g., clean, healthy, etc.).

The concept of instruction, its communicative tasks

This article deals with the concept of instructions, its types and communication tasks. It was found that the instruction can be characterized as an official business document of technical content and its design at all levels has a high degree of standardization, which ensures the economy in writing and perception of this text. The instructional discourse is investigated and its features are determined: the presence of different speech genres, in particular, the operation manual, the memo, the user manual, the prescription, the service directive; certain speech tactics, namely, informing, shifting responsibility, prompted to action; minimal change in communicative roles. Analyzed four standard types of instructions: 1) instructions for goods (household appliances, food, vehicles, etc.); 2) annotation to medicines; 3) departmental instructions (rules for filling out documents, customer behavior: customs declaration, fire instructions, etc.) 4) job description (rules of behavior for employees in a certain position) and six new types were added: audio / video instructions, interactive instructions, pop-up hints, hypertext knowledge base, hypertext online resource, electronic document. It was also found that the communicative tasks of the instructions are the message of information and the prescription of actions and for the design of the texts of the instructions of the product the optimal system of language means. It was determined that the compositional structure of the text of a typical instruction contains, as a rule, the following sections: introduction, general information, technical data, delivery set, safety requirements, the procedure for installing and preparing the product for work, the procedure for operating the product, product care, maintenance, rules storage and transportation, possible malfunctions and methods of their elimination, warranty obligations.

Topicalization in Japanese Cooking Discourse

A topic-wa-phrase is analyzed here in written recipes and the corresponding spoken instructional cooking discourse. Despite the possible assumption that the topic phrase is not used in recipes, the analysis shows that ingredients of a recipe are selectively topicalized. Those topicalized are the primary ingredients which are given with substantial procedural descriptions, when these procedures represent a parallel relationship to each other. The topicalization connects the parallel segments so that they constitute coherent discourse and properly represent the intended structure of the recipe. Also, in the spoken discourse, a topic-wa-phrase is used in a side-sequence (a digression) to connect with the main segment. These functions of representing important information and connecting parallel elements are consistent with observations in other genres of discourse. On the other hand, the analysis also suggests discourse type-based variations. In the instructional discourse, the “digressions” are connected as part of the coherent discourse. This contrasts with (non-instructional) casual spoken discourse, in which digressions are not topicalized and are detached from the main segment. These variations imply speakers’ different pragmatic intentions based on different types of discourse, which are reflected on their choice of referential forms.

COACH-PLAYER COMMUNICATIONS: AN ANALYSIS OF TOP-LEVEL COACHING DISCOURSE AT A SHORT-TERM ICE HOCKEY CAMP

Purpose: This study sought to analyze the instructional discourse of top-level coaches to identify the specific language content of coaching discourse in practice. Methodology: The study analyzed the recorded discourse of four coaches of the West Coast Hockey Prep Camp in Port Alberni, BC, Canada, between 2012 and 2016. Transcriptions of on-ice instructions were analyzed using Provalis QDA Miner v5.0.1 and Provalis WordStat v7.1.6 software to determine word-type and frequency. Main findings: The processed corpus of 21,376 words produced 1,022 quantifiable words which were classified into one or more of the categories of single-category language (i.e. General (G), General Slang (GSl), Sports Specific (SS), and Sports General (SG)), or the eight additional multi-category sub-categories (i.e. G/GSl, G/SS, G/SG, SS/SG, GSl/SG, G/SS/SG, G/GSl/SG, and GSl/SS/SG). Analyses revealed that single-category vocabulary (i.e. G, GSl, SS, and SG) made up 75.2% of the categorized language, with SS (4.6%) and SG (11.1%) making up 15.7% of the total. Applications: An understanding of the linguistic framework of instructional language in short-term training camps allows athletes to invest greater focus in their athletic performance in camp. The results offer athletes contextual reference for preparatory language study and authentic linguistic insight for the counter of potential target language anxiety. Novelty/Originality: Results indicate that top-level coaches relied significantly less on sports-specific word-type to facilitate their instruction and suggest that a general comprehension of English can provide a strong foundation for understanding top-level coaching discourse. This provides significant insight for athletes harboring concerns for English proficiency and coach-player miscommunication.

Using concept mapping for faculty development in the context of pedagogic frailty

The quality of teaching does not depend exclusively on the knowledge and experience of teachers, but also on the contextual variables that go along with the teaching (attitude, objectives, students, resources, etc.) or dimensions of pedagogic frailty (regulative and instructional discourse, pedagogy and discipline, research teaching nexus and locus of control. Identifying these variables may help to enhance teaching. A procedure for the capture, representation and transfer of knowledge between peers regarding active didactic methodologies supported by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) was applied in a case study research. The data were represented by concept maps. The aim was to identify variables that affect Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK), the use of technology in teaching and pedagogic frailty, through the analysis of the interrelations among the concept maps.The analysis of the maps shows the implementation of many innovations with ICT (project-based learning, service-learning, collaborative learning), their positive aspects and the difficulties in carrying them out. The teachers involved pointed out some factors that contribute to the development of pedagogic frailty, including the number of students in each class, the organization of teaching, the motivation, among others, and as conditions for a greater progress in innovative educational experiments using ICT.