Internationalisation in universities: to what extent do institutional boundaries delineate a researcher’s identity? A critical view’

The creating or re-adjusting of a researcher’s identity in an international and multicultural academic environment is undoubtedly a personal, individual and subjective experience. However, the environment within which this process occurs, with its rules and discursive practices, also needs to be carefully analysed and its potential influence on the shaping of identities investigated. A critical discourse analysis of the rules and discursive practices of universities can shed some light on the institutional limitations that are imposed onto researchers while creating their identity. Moreover, results of such an analysis may serve as a springboard for further research into how these newly constructed identities fit the neoliberal paradigm within which an ever-growing number of universities worldwide operate

Interculturality and the media. Building bridges or burning them?

At a time of changing geopolitical scenarios and revived nationalisms, what position does the media take in intercultural matters? And how does the audience interpret media text that rely on intercultural content? The paper uses data from a pilot study to analyse the discourses in an infotainment program and to explore qualitatively the interaction of one research participant with the text. The research uses a Critical Discourse Analysis lens and aims to explore the effects of mass-mediated travel and cultural programs on an audience. The mediation analytical framework that has been designed as part of the project will be introduced and briefly examined before looking at some of the data and discussing some preliminary findings. The paper aims to contribute to discussions in both Media Studies and Critical Discourse Studies by focusing on the genre of infotainment and by exploring its effects on an audience with regard to intercultural issues

Ideology and manipulation in travel documentaries: a cognitive-semiotic approach

Session 1: Monday, 17th October, 16:00-18:30 This session will take the form of a seminar and will provide an overview of my doctoral project, which was completed earlier this year. The abstract and a digital copy of the thesis can be found here: https://repository.canterbury.ac.uk/item/91182/cognition-and-ideological-effects-in-the-interaction-between-viewers-and-bbc-travel-and-cultural-documentaries-combining-multimodal-critical-discourse-analysis-and-audience-research. The first half of the seminar will cover the theoretical underpinnings of the thesis, with a particular focus on: - Analysing ideology through Gramscian and Critical Realist lenses - Key concepts in multimodal research - Analysing cognitive aspects, namely manipulation and epistemic vigilance (Sperber et al., 2010) through Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995) The second part of the seminar will focus on methodological aspects and look at some examples from the case studies contained in the thesis. Here the focus will be on: - Integrating Audience Research in the methodological architecture - Exploring semiotic and cognitive aspects of meaning interpretation as well as media effects Participants are encouraged to interact and ask questions throughout the seminar. Session 2: Tuesday, 18th October, 18:00-21:00 This session will take the form of a workshop. The aims are for participants to consider how aspects covered in Session 1 may be applied to their own research projects/agendas. Participants are strongly recommended to bring in some data of their own (whether actual or of the type they are currently analysing or wish to work on in a future project). The first half of the workshop will focus on methodological aspects: - Research design - Participant and data selection - Qualitative research instruments The second half of the workshop will focus on analytical and interpretative aspects: - Carrying out a multimodal text analysis - Exploring and interpreting ideologies - Exploring and interpreting critical connections between multimodal texts/discourses and societ

nterculturality in the media. Combining critical multimodal discourse analysis and reception theory

At a time of changing geopolitical scenarios and revived nationalisms, what position does the media take in intercultural matters? And how does the audience interpret media text that rely on intercultural content? The role of the media as a mirror of “reality” was the translucent background against which much research and theorising in Media Studies was done since the establishment of this field and up to the 1960s (Gurevitch et al., 1982/2005: pp. 3-4). Stuart Hall (1980) and a new critical tradition, however, convincingly challenged the mirror position: he argues that the media message is negotiated through the ideological encoding of meaning on the part of the text producer and the ideological decoding of meaning on the part of the audience. The interplay between the two forms the basis for the construction of “realities”. The paper uses data from my current research to analyse some cultural themes in an infotainment programme and to explore qualitatively the interaction of one research participant with the text. The research uses a Critical Multimodal Discourse Analysis lens (e.g. van Leeuwen, 2005; Machin and Mayr, 2012) and aims to explore the effects of mass-mediated travel and cultural programmes on an audience. The mediation analytical framework that has been designed as part of the project will be briefly introduced before looking at some of the data and discussing some preliminary findings. The paper aims to contribute to discussions in both Media Studies and Critical Discourse Studies by focusing on the genre of infotainment and by exploring its effects on an audience with regard to intercultural issues

Refining concepts for empirical multimodal research: defining semiotic modes and semiotic resources

The issue of defining key concepts in multimodal research is at the same time ongoing and of pivotal importance. Building on John Bateman’s categorisation of modes, and paying special attention to the concept of materiality within the discussion, the paper provides a clear differentiation between semiotic modes and semiotic resources and discusses the relationship between the two. These will be defined by also looking at how they differ from another key concept in multimodal research, i.e., media, and examples will be provided to illustrate how the newly defined concepts can guide empirical investigations of multimodal texts and their reception. The paper aims to continue the discussions around these key concepts amongst multimodal scholars, so that agreement in the field can eventually be reached

Multisensory processing, affect and multimodal manipulation: A cognitive-semiotic empirical study of travel documentaries

Multisensory processing represents the mirror image of multimodal meaning-making, in that interpreting multimodal discourse predominantly requires multisensory processing, even when different modes rely on the same sensory channels (Khateb et al., 2002), for example images and text in a book (Gibbons, 2012, p. 40). Remley (2017) makes a similar point when discussing the neuroscience of multimodal persuasive messages, when he asserts that “[t]he term ‘multisensory integration’ is the biological equivalent of the term ‘multimodal’ in rhetoric” (p. 9). An understanding of multisensory processing can therefore be (and presumably is) exploited at the stage of text-production as a resource for manipulative multimodal discourses, with all the ideological consequences that entails. The concept of manipulation has been a matter of discussion in critical discourse studies (CDS) and pragmatics for more than a decade. Agreement on how to define and analyse the latter has yet to be reached, although most scholars seem to agree that Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995) can provide a useful entry point thanks to its theorisation of variable contexts and individual cognitive environments (de Saussure, 2005; Maillat, 2013; Maillat and Oswald, 2009; Oswald, 2014). Moreover, the concept of epistemic vigilance (Sperber et al., 2010) has been used to investigate the cognitive barriers that need to be bypassed in order for manipulation to work (Hart, 2013; Mazzarella, 2015). Finally, Sorlin (2017: 133) recently highlighted the need to focus not only on the cognitive aspects influencing manipulation, but also on “the psychological aspect of manipulation that often consists in exploiting the target's weaknesses”, thus pointing towards the dimension of affect as a further explanatory force. This paper begins with an overview of the concepts of manipulation and epistemic vigilance, before discussing insights from the field of multisensory processing in the neurosciences. Then, drawing on some principles from Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995) and looking at some data from travel documentary programmes and their viewers, examples are offered of how manipulation is attempted and achieved through this specific multimodal genre in individual case studies. The focus of the analysis will be on bottom-up (i.e. text-driven) processes and the interpretation/reaction of an audience. The research draws on a novel methodological approach (Castaldi, 2021) that integrates Audience Research (e.g., Schrøder et al., 2003) and Social Semiotics (e.g. Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996, 2001; van Leeuwen, 1999; Machin and Mayr, 2012) in order to analyse media interactions in their individuality. Results suggest that the affective dimension, predominantly attended to through sonic and visual modes, plays a key role for multimodal manipulation to successfully occur

Media and the transformation of “reality”. A critical discourse analysis of BBC Panorama’s “Slumdogs and millionaires”

The role of the media as a mirror of “reality” was the translucent background against which much research and theorising in Media Studies was done since the establishment of this field and up to the 1960s (Gurevitch et al., 1982/2005: pp. 3-4). Stuart Hall (1980) and a new critical tradition, however, convincingly challenged the mirror position: he argues that the media message is negotiated through the ideological encoding of meaning on the part of the text producer and the ideological decoding of meaning on the part of the audience. The interplay between the two forms the basis for the construction of “realities”. After briefly introducing some recent elaborations of Hall’s encoding/decoding model, this paper will look at a practical example of how media can represent and transform reality. In order to do so, I approach the media text through a Critical Discourse Analysis lens (Fairclough, 1995) and carry out a thematic analysis of the representation offered by the Panorama program compared to other representations. The argument is supported by contextual/ discursive and intertextual/ interdiscursive evidence as well as a close analysis of the text. Finally, as part of a small-scale reception study, I will ask the audience to take part in a short survey in order to explore their immediate response to the material viewed. The paper aims to contribute to discussions in Media Studies about how reality is represented in the media by employing tools from the Critical Discourse Analysis tradition and by focusing on the interaction of audiences with media texts. At the same time, it also aims to contribute to research in Critical Discourse Studies by focusing on the genre of infotainment delivered through mass-mediated channels and by exploring its effects on an audience

Beyond language: multimodal literacy and ELT. Opportunities and challenges

In an already highly digitalised world, the Covid-19 pandemic has further amplified the need for computer-mediated communication. In turn, this has increased the need for those working with English as the Lingua Franca in professional or education settings to add to their communicative repertoire, beyond the mere linguistic knowledge. It is within this context that the idea of multimodal literacy has come to play an even more dominant role. Multimodal literacy can be defined as the ability to communicate using two or more modes of meaning (Mills, 2016); examples of modes are writing, speech, gestures, images, music and sound to name a few. It is easy to see how virtually all communication (digital or not) is multimodal in nature. A focus on multimodal literacy and expertise in designing and running curricula that fully address the multimodal nature of communication in professional and educational settings can provide institutions with opportunities to offer courses that are not only more appealing to the digital native, but also better representative of the international contexts in which communication occurs and, hence, functional to the global professional. The talk will give an overview of the potentials and challenges of multimodal ELT courses by looking at curriculum design, teacher professional development and marketing strategies for both face-to-face and online teaching contexts

A multimodal analysis of the representation of the Rohingya Crisis in BBC’s Burma with Simon Reeve (2018): building consensus for political action?

The Rohingya Crisis in Myanmar has been given considerable coverage in the news media following the displacement of around 700,000 people to Bangladesh in August 2017. The United Nations Human Rights Council has been following the situation closely and has put forward calls for action from the international community. Burma with Simon Reeve (BBC, 2018) is one of the few TV cultural programmes to have investigated the issue first hand. This paper presents a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996; van Leeuwen 2005; Machin and Mayr 2012) of the text, focusing on how the Rohingya crisis is represented and on how this representation is negotiated by one viewer. It is argued that the text seeks to build political consensus in support of intervention from the international community. The paper contributes to discussions in Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis and Media Studies by researching the genre of infotainment and by exploring its effects on an audience

Knowledge base, information search and intention to adopt innovation

Innovation is a process that involves searching for new information. This paper builds upon theoretical insights on individual and organizational learning and proposes a knowledge based model of how actors search for information when confronted with innovation. The model takes into account different search channels, both local and non local, and relates their use to the knowledge base of actors. The paper also provides an empirical validation of our model based on a study on the search channels used by a sample of Dutch consumers when buying new consumer electronic products.knowledge base, learning, information search, innovation, consumer behaviour