Multimodal meaning-making of aggression in English song narrative: A cognitive-pragmatic perspective
Abstract
This article addresses cognitive and pragmatic aspects of the multimodal meaning-making of AGGRESSION in the English song narrative. The cognitive-pragmatic foundations integrate cognitive and pragmatic aspects with multimodal ones, which allows to explain how signs of different modes and semiotic resources instantiate the concept and which cognitive features are decisive for (re)construction of meaning by performers and viewers. Cognitive features have verbal and non-verbal implementation through visual and auditory modes. The verbal semiotic resource, implemented through auditory and visual modes, contains lexical and pragmatic means of direct/indirect realization of aggression. Lexical means include words that name/describe/express aggression, as well as lexemes that acquire the aggressive meaning in a certain context. Pragmatic means are represented by expressive statements realizing threat, order, reproach, and accusation. The non-verbal semiotic resource is also represented through both modes and is characterized by semiotic heterogeneity, including prosodic/mimic/gestural features, various aspects of performers’ appearance, music clip design and lighting. They include hoarse voice/high exalted vocals/screaming; aggressive look/bulging eyes/wide open mouth/tense distorted face; active movements/fight; dark clothes/ dark make-up/tattoos. The musical component is characterized by the lower register, alternating consonance and dissonance, and a fast tempo. The lighting includes the play of light and shadow, and flashes. The construction of aggression appears as a result of the integration of semiotic elements into a multimodal blend, which is an emergent entity. Semantic relations between the blend components are based on the complementarity or contradiction of their elements, which makes it possible to single out convergent and divergent constructive patterns.
Downloads
References
Aggression. (n.d.). In Collins English Dictionary and Thesaurus. Retrieved from https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/aggression
Aggression. (n.d.). In Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus. Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aggression
Aggression. (n.d.). In WordNet Search – 3.1. Retrieved from http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=aggression
Archer, D. E. (2008). Verbal aggression and impoliteness: Related or synonymous? In D. Bousfield & M. Locher (Eds.) Impoliteness in Language. Language, Power and Social Processes Series (pp. 181-207). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110208344.3.181
Bara, B. (2010). Cognitive Pragmatics. The Mental Processes of Communication. Translated from Italian by John Douthwaite. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press.
Baron, R. A. (1977). Human aggression. New York, NY: Plenum Press.
Bateman, A., & Schmidt, K.-H. (2012). Multimodal film analysis. How films mean. London, New York: Routledge.
Bekiari, A., Deliligka, S. & Koustelios, A. (2017). Examining relations of aggressive communication in social networks. Social Networking, 6(1), 38-52. https://doi.org/10.4236/sn.2017.61003
Berkowitz, L. (2000). Causes and consequences of feelings. Madison: Cambridge University Press.
Damasio, A. (2005). Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. New York, NY: Penguin Books.
Farnsworth, P. R. (1969). The social psychology of music. Ames, IA: The Iowa University Press.
Fischer-Lichte, E. (2008). The transformative power of performance: A new aesthetics. London & New York: Routledge.
Freud, Z. (1998). Vstup do psykhoanalizu [Introduction to psychoanalysis]. Kyiv: Osnovy (in Ukrainian).
Fromm, E. (1973). The anatomy of human destructiveness. Michigan, MI: Rinehart and Winston.
Genette, G. (1982). Figures of literary discourse. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Izard, C. (1991). The psychology of emotions. New York, NY: Plenum Press.
Jay, T. (2000). Why we curse: A neuro-psycho-social theory of speech. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing.
Jewitt, C., Adami, E., Archer, A., Bjorkvall, A., & Lim, F.V. (2021). Editorial. Multimodality & Society, 1(1), 3-7. https://doi.org/10.1177/2634979521992902
Kalinak, K. (1992). Settling the score: Music and the classical Hollywood film. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Kress, G., & Leeuwen, T. van (2001). Multimodal discourse. The modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Arnold Publishers.
Krysanova, T. (2014). Pryroda ekspresyvnosti v kinodyskursi [The nature of expressiveness in cinematic discourse]. Visnyk Kharkivskoho natsionalnoho universytetu imeni V. N. Karazina. Seriia: Romano-hermanska filolohiia. Metodyka vykladannia inozemnykh mov, 1103(78), 87-91 (in Ukrainian).
Krysanova, T. (2022). Emergent meaning-making in multimodal discourse: a case for sadness in the Horse Whisperer. Cognition, communication, discourse, 24, 37-52. https://doi.org/10.26565/2218-2926-2022-24-03
Krysanova, T., & Shevchenko, I. (2021). Conceptual blending in multimodal construction of negative emotions in film. In A. Pawelec, A. Shaw, & G. Szpila (Eds.), Text-Image-Music: Crossing the Borders. Intermedial Conversations on the Poetics of Verbal, Visual and Musical Texts. In Honour of Prof. Elzbieta Chrzanowska-Kluczewska. Series: Text – Meaning – Context: Cracow Studies in English Language, Literature and Culture (pp. 357-371). Berlin: Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/b18012
Kumar, R. (2021). Verbal aggression on social media: How, why and its automatic identification. In Khan, T. (Ed.) Alternative horizons in linguistics: A festschrift in honour of Prof. Panchanan Mohanty (pp. 287-310). Munich: Lincom Europa.
Leeuwen, T. van (1999). Speech, music, sound. London: Macmillan Education.
Nolting, H.-P. (1997). Lernfall Aggression. Wie sie entsteht ‒ wie sie zu vermindern is [Learning case aggression. How it arises ‒ how to reduce it]. Hamburg: Psychology.
Portch, E., Havelka, J., Brown, C., & Giner-Sorolla, R. (2015, July 28). Using affective knowledge to generate and validate a set of emotion-related, action words. PeerJ, 2015 Jul 28; 3: e1100. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1100
Schmid, H.-J. (2012). Generalizing the apparently ungeneralizable. Basic ingredients of a cognitive- pragmatic approach to the construal of meaning-in-context. In H.-J. Schmid (Ed.), Cognitive pragmatics. Handbooks of pragmatics (pp. 3-22). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Shevchenko, I., Morozova, I., & Shevchenko, V. (2022). Nominatsii ahresii Rosii proty Ukrainy v anhlomovnykh media: kohnityvno-prahmatychnyi analiz [Nominations of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in the English media: a cognitive-pragmatic study]. Visnyk KhNU imeni V. N. Karazina. Seriia: Inozemna filolohiia. Metodyka vykladannia inozemnykh mov, 95, 70-77 (in Ukrainian). https://doi.org/10.26565/10.26565/2227-8877-2022-95-09
Shevchenko, I. S. (2019). Cognitive pragmatics: approaches and perspectives. Naukovyi visnyk Khersonskoho derzhavnoho universytetu. Seriia hermanistyka ta mizhkulturna komunikatsiia, 169-173. https://doi.org/10.32999/ksu2663-3426/2019-2-26
Stanislavska, K.I. (2016). Mystetsko-vydovyshchni formy suchasnoi kultury [Artistic and performing forms of modern culture]. Kyiv: NAKKKiM (in Ukrainian).
Tagg, P. (1982). Analysing popular music: Theory, method and practice. Popular Music, 2, 37-67.
Tedeschi, J. (2002). Die Sozialpsychologie von Aggression und Gewalt [The social psychology of aggression and violence]. In W. Heitmeyer & J. Hagan (Eds.). Internationales Handbuch der Gewaltforschung (pp. 573-597). Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
Tsapiv, A. (2020). Poetyka naratyvu anhliiskomovnykh khudozhnikh tekstiv dlia ditei [Poetics of the narrative of English fiction texts for children]. Unpublished doctor of sciences dissertation, Kharkivskyi natsionalnyi universytet imeni V. N. Karazina, Kharkiv, Ukraine (in Ukrainian).
Tsohazidis, S. L. (1993). Scenes and frames for orders and threats. In R. Geiger (Ed.), Conceptualizations and mental processing in language (pp. 731-739). Berlin, New York: de Gruyter.
Turner, M. (2017). Multimodal form-meaning pairs for blended classic joint attention. Linguistics Vanguard, 3, 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1515 / lingvan-2016-0043
Vasilyeva, L. L. (2016). Rok-muzyka yak faktor rozvytku kultury druhoi polovyny ХХ stolittia [Rock-music as a factor of cultural development in the second half of the 20th century]. Mykolajiv: Ilion (in Ukrainian).
Watanabe, H., Bouazizi, M., & Ohtsuki, T. (2018). Hate speech on twitter: A pragmatic approach to collect hateful and offensive expressions and perform hate speech detection. IEEE Access, 6, 13825-13835. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2806394
Yermolenko, S., Kravets, L., Siuta, H., & Kozlovska, L. (2022). Ukrainian political internet discourse: Signs of language aggression. Studies in Media and Communication, 10(3), 217-225. https://doi.org/10.11114/smc.v10i3.5854
Zlatev, J. (2008). The co-evolution of intersubjectivity and bodily mimesis. In J. Zlatev, T. P. Racine, C. Sinha & E. Itkonen (Eds.), The Shared Mind: Perspectives of Intersubjectivity (pp. 215- 244). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Copyright (c) 2023 Tetiana Krysanova, Oleksandra Herezhun
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Authors, who publish with this journal, accept the following conditions:
The authors reserve the copyright of their work and transfer to the journal the right of the first publication of this work under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Non-Derivs License (CC BY-NC-ND), which allows other persons to freely distribute a published work with mandatory reference to the authors of the original work and the first publication of the work in this journal.
Authors have the right to enter into separate additional agreements for the non-exclusive dissemination of the work in the form in which it was published by this journal (for example, to post the work in the electronic institutions' repository or to publish as part of a monograph), provided that the link to the first publication of the work in this journal is given.
The journal policy allows and encourages the authors to place the manuscripts on the Internet (for example, in the institutions' repositories or on personal websites), both before the presentation of this manuscript to the editorial board and during review procedure, as it contributes to the creation of productive scientific discussion and positively affects the efficiency and dynamics of citing the published work (see The Effect of Open Access).
