Cognition, Communication, Discourse

Transmedial presence of verbal texts in architecture and public space. Between informativity and emotivity

Elżbieta Chrzanowska-Kluczewska — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 16:13:24 +0000

From the semiotic viewpoint, architectonic structures and the surrounding public spaces can be seen as texts to be read and interpreted within proper historical, social, and cultural contexts. In addition, they are almost always multimodal, that is polysemiotic texts whose content becomes complemented with pictorial elements (paintings, sculptures), with written or oral language and, on occasion, with music.

I intend to focus specifically on the presence of verbal texts inside, on or around buildings (mostly within an urban space), which is a case of textual embedment. Functions of written inserts, inscriptions, signboards, tablets, posters, banners, graffiti, etc. are multifarious. They range from informational and explanatory, to devotional, to political–critical, to – in the end – poetic, experimental, creative, funny, and ironical. Aesthetically, they often enrich but sometimes violate architecture and public space. The following types of verbal texts will be considered briefly, according to their content:

1) up-to-date information (warnings, advertisements, etc.);

2) historical-institutional information;

3) religious-devotional (including critical) information;

4) political commentaries;

5) poetic and experimental creations, mostly artistic critical games played by conceptual and post-modern artists.

Several of my examples qualify as instances of urban creativity, specifically street art and graffiti of resistance (cf. Awad & Wagoner, 2017; Stampoulidis, 2019).

In the spirit of cognitive semiotics, defined by Zlatev, Sonesson, and Konderak (2016) as the transdisciplinary, conceptual-empirical study of meaning, mind and communication, this article (based on a corpus of twenty-six inscriptions gathered from many international locations) raises the issue of the interplay of informativity and emotional load contained in verbal texts immersed in public settings. Undoubtedly, the message conveyed by architectural carriers and urban space contributes synergically to the overall meaning of the verbal messages that accompany them.

Constructing competing discourses on the Russo-Ukrainian war: journalistic translation in wartime

Angela Kamyanets — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 16:51:32 +0000

This study employs critical discourse analysis to examine two opinion articles published in Western press that propose divergent strategies for the West in the Russo-Ukrainian war. The analysis focuses on three key aspects: representations of the war, evaluations, and dialogicality. The study also analyses Ukrainian journalistic translations of the articles. One article argues for equipping Ukraine with all necessary weapons for a swift victory over Russia, while the other supports incremental weapons supplies, leading to a prolonged war. The findings reveal that the former article portrays the war as Ukraine’s fight for independence and a battle to uphold international law, whereas the latter predominantly depicts it as territorial aggression that threatens global nuclear security. The former article employs a wide range of evaluative devices to underscore Russia’s brutality and condemn the delayed provision of Western weapons to Ukraine. In contrast, the other article primarily employs evaluative language to amplify fears of nuclear escalation. Regarding dialogicality, one author structures his text as an implied dialogue with hypothetical opponents, employing rhetorical questions, imperative sentences, irony, and first-person narration, whereas the other author references individuals with institutional authority to validate his assertions. The divergent treatment of these articles by the Ukrainian media, both at the macro and micro levels – reflected in the significant disparity in translations (12 to 1) and the manner in which the articles were reframed during translation – reveals the gatekeeping function of translation and suggests the Ukrainian media’s focus on positive news from the West as a means to keep up the country’s morale.

Transformations of the American hero in the US media discourse

Svitlana Lyubymova — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 17:21:27 +0000

Abstract In the era of digital technologies, media has become a powerful tool of shaping worldview of people by means of sociocultural stereotypes. Formed in the process of evaluative categorization, sociocultural stereotypes represent simplified and conventional images of individuals and groups in media discourse. Affected by a range of factors, stereotypes undergo changes. Mass media play a particularly influential role in this process. The prominent figure of the US media landscape is ideologically charged stereotype of the American hero that embodies nationally significant ideas of freedom, individualism, and enterprise that lead to the accomplishment of a much-desired goal. I argue that the idealized cultural construct of the American hero, embodied in a sociocultural stereotype, is conceptualized through an image schema integrating foundational elements: PART–WHOLE–FORCE, SOURCE–PATH–GOAL. The WHOLE, representing the hero, comprises PARTS such as appearance, clothing, and behavior. FORCE signifies hero’s strength necessary to achieve the GOAL. SOURCE arises from one’s understanding, while the PATH involves overcoming adversities, culminating in success as the GOAL. This paper outlines transformations of the American hero stereotype in the US media discourse in diachronic perspective. Invariably virtuous, courageous, self-confident, purposeful, and hardworking, the American hero is inspirational and idealized image that takes on different forms due to changes of historical context. In different periods, the American hero is represented by a first settler, a cowboy, a ranger, a scientist. This stereotype functions as a model pattern for evaluating individuals and social groups. While the portrayal of the American hero in media discourse adapts to changing contexts, his image schema remains invariable.

Visuals and text in pharmaceutical advertising: A multimodal analysis and ethical dilemmas

Svitlana Nasakina — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 17:43:55 +0000

This article deals with the multimodality in modern English-language advertising. The influence of advertising on consumers has been a subject of many investigations among linguists. In this present paper, I build on the theoretical and practical data gained by researchers who studied virtual influencers in multimodal advertising, discussed the unique characteristics of the suggestion realization strategies in political advertising, evaluated advertisement discourse influence formula in terms of positive and negative orientation of the advertisement, investigated various functions of different contact languages in advertising, the phenomenon of multimodality in the Polish advertising of pharmaceutical products with the audio-visual spots. Scholars also used a pragmatic approach to advertisements in Britain and Japan and conducted a multimodal discourse analysis of malaria drugs advertisement. However, the role of multimodality in the context of pharmaceutical advertising remains understudied. Advertised pharmaceutical products have an impact on human consciousness. Misleading or inaccurate information can seriously affect consumers, including adverse health outcomes. The unique nature of pharmaceutical advertising makes pharmaceutical advertising different from other types of advertising, like political or consumer advertising. The material for this study consists of 500 samples in both paper and electronic formats. I hypothesize that the multimodal character of pharmaceutical advertising, incorporating both verbal and non-verbal elements, significantly enhances its persuasive impact by influencing consumer emotions and encouraging them to select specific pharmaceuticals. To prove this hypothesis, I identified patterns of interaction between verbal and non-verbal components through the prism of words, images, signs, and symbols. In this research, a multimodal approach allowed to uncover both the intended meanings and the subtle manipulation tactics used in pharmaceutical advertising.

Eco-activist imagery in literary texts for children (a case study of English postmodern fairy tales and short stories)

Alla Tsapiv, Mariia Andrieieva — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 18:04:10 +0000

This research focuses on the eco-activist multimodal imagery in English postmodern fairy tales and short stories for children as a crucial tool in meaning-making. It is claimed that literary texts for children dynamically reflect current global trends in culture, environmental pollution, gender equality, and family issues. While some topics remain taboo for young readers, others are increasingly prevalent, gradually replacing magical worlds with more realistic, thought-provoking imagery. It has been observed that in recent years, the participation of young people and children in the eco-activist movement has been increasing. They advocate for environmental preservation and solving urgent environmental problems. Literary texts for children are essential tools for fostering a responsible attitude toward the environment at a young age. Due to them, child-readers are introduced to crucial eco-centric issues and ways of solving them and taught the consequences of their actions on nature.
The analysis of our case study reveals that the protagonists of eco-activist fairy tales are primarily children concerned about environmental issues. Shadow narratives and the point of view of the child-focaliser are realized by the visual means, i.e. visual metaphors, salience of definite objects on the pictures, interplay of colours and shapes. It has been observed that visual imagery expands, clarifies environmental protection issues and appeals to the better understanding of child-readers their role in preserving the planet and keeping it clean and safe for living. Visual components clearly show the child-reader the damage caused to the environment by human activity: polluted air, water bodies and cities, injured animals, and deforestation. Important meanings are embedded in the dominant colours of the illustrations: green and blue predominate in the illustrations of nature, while grey and black accompany the images of the results of anthropogenic activity. The victory of Good (nature) in fairy tales is represented by a shift from grey and black to green. Intertextual links between literary texts for children by the same author can be formed through illustrations. Thus, a single fictional world is created in which the eco-activist activity of a child-antagonist is not an isolated phenomenon.

Reception of the political news narratives in readers’ responses: multimodality and intertextuality

Svitlana Zhabotynska — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 18:21:16 +0000

Developed in the field of international relations, the theory of the strategic narrative (Miskimmon et al., 2013; 2017 among others) identifies it as a means for political actors to construct a shared meaning of international politics, and to shape the perceptions, beliefs, and behaviour of domestic and international actors. The authors of the theory maintain that the explanation of the workings of the strategic narrative presumes the study of its formation, projection, and reception. Such explanation brings together various scholarly fields aimed at the search of the lacking methodology that demonstrates how the formation, projection, and reception aspects of the strategic narrative work together as a triptych. The proposed article approaches this problem from the perspective of cognitive linguistics that studies conceptual grounds for verbally delivered information. The article forwards and tests a novel methodological framework, which posits a cognitive ontology of the information, featured verbally and visually, as the feasible grounds for tracking regularities in the simultaneous dynamics of the three narrative aspects. The article focuses on the projection / reception narrative aspects, represented in a media news text and the readers’ responses to it – the issue relevant for the linguistic field of intertextuality. Methodologically and thematically, the article continues the previous research (Zhabotynska & Velivchenko, 2019; Zhabotynska & Ryzhova, 2022; Chaban et al. 2023; Chaban et al. 2024 among others) of the formation / projection aspects of the strategic narrative featured in a news media text.

Multimodal, transmedial, and trans-European perspectives for online language teaching and learning: II YUFE – Ukraine seminar

Joanna Winska, Iryna Shevchenko — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 18:37:03 +0000

This review explores the Second YUFE – Ukraine seminar, held from November 12th to 14th, 2024. Young Universities for the Future of Europe is a European University alliance of 10 higher education institutions. Hosted by the University Centre for Foreign Languages at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń—one of Poland’s largest state universities—and supported by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA), the seminar marked a significant trans-European collaboration. This event brought together foreign language educators and researchers from Poland, Ukraine, Cyprus, Finland, Georgia, and Belgium, focusing on the theme of online language teaching and learning, which underscored its relevance.

Although multimodal and transmedial teaching and learning practices have become popular for ESL and other educational contexts, several additional questions have emerged, including the development of students’ multimodal literacy through online learning, the need for a more critical approach to the assessment of student achievements, and a focus on fostering both professional skills and cultural and social values among students.

The event centered on the application of modern multimodal and transmedial tools in teaching foreign languages and translation. These tools include digital technologies such as H5P, ChatGPT, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, as well as innovative pedagogical approaches like project-based learning and design thinking. Discussions culminated in identifying prospects for joint international projects, particularly in teaching business English (ESP) and English for Academic Purposes (EAP). The proposed initiatives aim to involve students from various European partner universities in collaborative language education.