Revista de Estudos da Linguagem

Social Semiotics and Multimodality through the Lenses of Kress

Záira Bomfante dos Santos — 2024-10-11

This article provides a discussion on Multimodal Social Semiotics. For this purpose, we gather the main works that represent the thinking of Gunther Kress and collaborators. In this sense, when reviewing his works, we found Michael Halliday’s (1978) theoretical formulations that grounded the sociosemiotic vision such as choice, interest, motivated sign, all functions that guide a specific vision of language and grammar. In the scope of the theory, we find the contributions of Kressian thought on multimodality with an interest in exploring the forms of modern meaning. Thus, based on these principles, we present a set of research that brings reflections of his thinking to the studies of language and communication.

Multimodality Issues in a Text from TAG Livros on Instagram

Ana Elisa Ribeiro — 2024-10-11

This article discusses the design elements of a text composed of six pieces/ cards published by TAG Livros on Instagram on the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia, in Brazil, on May 17, 2022. Despite the enormous political and humanitarian relevance of this theme, we will restrict ourselves to the elements that make up the cards, producing a reading exercise of their production and consumption processes, informed by multimodality. The cards, directly selected from the TAG Books Instagram profile, were then downloaded and organized for analysis. The results of this theoretical incursion into the full text, especially informed by the books Multimodal discourse and Reading images, by Kress and Van Leeuwen (2001; 2006), favor questions and reflections about our conceptions of text and design. Also on the agenda are the scope and reach of linguistic studies as well as the linguists’ education, in the face of such complex and, at the same time, socially current objects. Some categories of this approach are debated here, based on the materiality of the selected text. In the final considerations, we ask new questions regarding compositions like the one we focus on here, in addition to proposing a constant exercise of broadening the horizons of linguists and teachers of reading and text production.

Statues or Ballerinas?

Francis Arthuso Paiva — 2024-10-11

This article has a social semiotic and proprioceptive assumption. From the social semiotic point of view, people’s communication practice consists of resignifying languages, rather than creating them originally. At the same time, there is a maldistribution of language resources motivated by unequal power relations between people and social classes. Therefore, groups with scarce resources tend to reproduce communicational practices with the most available resources and which are shared by more people. The resignification and reproduction of resources make communicational practices become habits. From the proprioceptive point of view, habits come from attitudes formed by muscles, caused by power relations between people and the world. Therefore, this article presents as a thesis that a communicational practice of reframing, when becoming a habit, can itself become a language. This is a theoretical development article, based on bibliographical research, which seeks a synthesis between two theories. The objective is to propose a method to analyze the embodied multimodality. The article systematizes how communicational practices become habits and proposes a method for analyzing these practices. Based on this method, it presents an analysis of the language of anti-democratic demonstrators after the Brazilian elections in 2022. The result points to a language of denial of the body, the world and life, which emerges from the habits of resignification incorporated by the demonstrators, whose discourse is based on religious idealism, and militarism is a consequence of it. The conclusion is that the very choices of the demonstrators’ communicational practices are a language because it’s possible produce meaning.

Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Studies

Rocío Flax — 2024-10-11

In this work, we intend to delve into the importance of using cognitive linguistics tools to describe and explain the functioning of discourses from a critical perspective. In particular, we analyse the way in which the concepts of frames, metaphors, metonyms and image schemes can be used productively for the analysis of the verbal mode and manual gestures. In order to do this, we analyse an interview that former Chilean President Sebastián Piñera gave in 2016 during the campaign prior to his re-election. We conclude that certain manual gestures carry ideational meaning and reinforces discursive strategies present in the verbal mode.

Multimodality and Racial Representation Suggested in E foi assim que eu e a escuridão ficamos amigas, by the Rapper Emicida

Francisco Wellington Borges Gomes — 2024-10-11

It is known that multimodality is an inherent characteristic in any text, however, in areas such as literature, it still faces obstacles to being fully recognized as a carrier of meaning and as an object of aesthetic appreciation, partly because of the culture of praise of the written verbal text that lasted for much of the history of literary studies. However, new perspectives brought to light by the propagation of texts that mix different semiotic modes, especially those published in digital media, have indicated that the literary text begins to be seen with different eyes. The same can be said in relation to the adoption of a perspective for reading the literary text as a tool for social awareness, empowerment and action aimed at solving problems, such as racism and social inequalities linked to ethnicity. From these perspectives, in this text, we present a multimodal analysis of the children’s work E foi assim que eu e a escuridão ficamos amigas, both in its printed and in its audiovisual version, to demonstrate that although the verbal utterances do not explicitly present connotations linked to the appreciation of black culture, such meanings are expressed through the multimodal relationship established between written, sound and visual verbal texts, among others. At the end of the analysis, we suggest transmodality (Bezermer; Kress, 2008), as a theoretical framework suitable for the interpretation of the referred texts.

Relações intersemióticas em verbetes de um dicionário infantil de língua espanhola

Dulcimar Albuquerque de Sousa — 2024-10-11

This article is a part of the research developed during the first author’s master’s course. This work investigated the verbal-visual relationship in entries from the dictionary Mi primer diccionario de ciencia (Sousa, 2021) produced from a corpus composed of written texts and drawings made by Catalan-speaking elementary school children in Spain. Our main objective in this article is to present a more detailed multimodal analysis of four entries not included in the master thesis. The theoretical framework was based mainly on the following authors: Kress and van Leeuwen (2021), Martinec and Salway (2005), Hernández (2000), and Martinez Pulido (2012). The research is characterized by being descriptive and qualitative in nature, and the results of the analyses attest to the potential of the two semiotic modes – verbal (written word) and visual (drawings) – for understanding the entries. In addition, both the written information in the definitions and the semiotic elements in the drawings reveal elements present in society, possibly experienced by the children in different contexts. In this sense, the study shows how the definitions of the entries, and their respective drawings are interrelated for the construction of meanings, enabling potential users to obtain an understanding of the terms in the dictionary based on the multisemioses inserted in the work.

The Notion of Semiotic Mode in Kress’s Theory and Its Role in Proposing an Analytical Model for Multi-semiotic Texts

Lucas Baumgratz-Gonçalves — 2024-10-11

The notion of mode proposed by Kress is extremely productive for the analysis of multi-semiotic texts, as it is possible to observe the way in which the different modes are organized for meaning making. Based on this notion, this text aims to present elements for the proposal of an analytical model for the analysis of educational motion graphics, a semiotic artifact typical of emerging social practices and quite common in the hypermedia culture. Adopting a quali-quantitative and interdisciplinary methodological approach in the field of Applied Linguistics for the analysis and discussion of the data, the results indicate that the modes need to be considered based on their potential in the context in which they are produced and disseminated. We conclude that the verbal oral mode predominates over the others in the educational motion graphic analyzed, as it is from it that the other modes become part of a multi-semiotic artifact in meaning making.

Indexing

The Digital Platform “Kahoot” in the Brazilian Basic Education

Reinildes Dias — 2024-10-11

This article conceives that learning English is essential in the Brazilian Basic Education where multiliteracies, in a decolonial and emancipatory perspective, can be developed in favor of full citizenship. For this, teachers need to tune their pedagogical practices to the demands of today’s society, where the two aspects, multimodality and diversity, are intertwined in the process of educating students, called the “P” generation (for participatory). Knowledge in this additional language needs to be decolonized to include topics of social relevance that incite debates and the development of critical awareness in the pursuit of transformative and emancipatory learning. The homepage and some activities of the Kahoot gamified digital environment were chosen for a critical-interpretative documental analysis, to investigate how they contribute to a contemporary pedagogy in line with the changes arising from digital technologies, as our theoretical framework reveals. Our analysis shows that the various alternatives present in Kahoot for the development of knowledge in English, pari passu with the possibilities of including the two aspects of multiliteracies and gamification, can contribute to students’ agency and transformative role in learning, being autonomous, capable of playing and winning in the process of improving communication in English in the everyday social practices through language.

Multimodal Literacy

Ana Paula Regner — 2024-10-11

This article aims to analyze a multimodal text, the tweet, in the light of Visual Design Grammar (GDV) aiming to propose didactic-pedagogical suggestions from a critical (multi)literacies perspective. The corpus of analysis consists of the text “Ataque a tiros em escola do ES: Por que ataques em escolas têm se repetido no Brasil?”, published on Twitter by Jornal do Estado de São Paulo (Estadão) in November 2022. The procedures of analysis comprise: i) analyzing and describing, based on GDV, the representational, interactive and compositional meanings that make up the image resources of the text (Kress; van Leeuwen, 2020) and ii) presenting a proposal for didactic exploration to be developed in Portuguese language classes, based on Pedagogy of Multiliteracies (Kalantzis et al., 2020).

Story Apps as Didactic Multimodal Resources for Multiliteracies Practices

Íris Susana Pires Pereira — 2024-10-11

This article aims to contribute to the understanding of the use of interactive story apps as didactic resources for fostering the learning and teaching of multiliteracies. It presents the multimodal discourse analysis of an interactive story app showing a dense net of intermodal meaning relations, such as convergence, complementarity, and divergence, in the representation of ideational and interpersonal meanings. The results allow the characterization of the story app as a complex multimodal ensemble and point to the need of a renewed readers and teacher’s agency in the pedagogical use of interactive story apps in the learning and teaching of multiliteracies. The article finishes by identifying the limitations of the study and some future developments.

Social Semiotics

Arlete Ribeiro Nepomuceno — 2024-10-11

Neste artigo, objetivamos analisar múltiplos significados semiótico-imagéticos que constroem e/ou representam significados sociais, estabelecem interação e organizam os elementos da composição dos textos, numa malha multimodal, na consideração do contexto. Para atender a esse propósito, ancoramo-nos nos pressupostos teórico-metodológicos da Semiótica Social, numa abordagem multimodal, preconizada por Hodge e Kress (1998), Kress (1997; 2003; 2010), com ênfase nas categorias analíticas da tríade de significados metafuncionais, propostos por Halliday (2014 [1985]) e incorporados pela Gramática do Design Visual (Kress; van Leeuwen, 2006 [1996]). Metodologicamente, para uma análise qualitativo-interpretativista, o corpus selecionado é composto por um frame da primeira temporada da série nacional “Bom dia, Verônica” (2020), disponível na plataforma streaming Netflix, um meme sobre o príncipe Charles (2022), um cartaz publicitário do Baile da Santinha (2022) e uma charge sobre a espetacularização da violência pela mídia (2023), veiculados no suporte midiático Instagram. Este estudo justifica-se pela necessidade de (re)conhecimento e entendimento da ampliação semântico-pragmática de significados orquestrados no todo social na e pela língua(gem). A partir disso, concluímos que textos construídos por multissemioses são recorrentes na sociedade moderna, para atender a diferentes formas de divulgação, narrando experiências e construindo conceitos; estabelecendo relações interpessoais e organizando as informações.

Interaction and Multimodality on Instragram

Thais de Castro Casagrande — 2024-10-11

The present text brings discussions related to linguistic interactions in a digital environment. Particularly, this study reinforces that the appropriation of technological resources requires specific skills of reading practices in the computerized universe. To discuss this, we use as bibliographical reference authors such as Lévy (1999), who discusses cyberculture; Ribeiro (2009), with discussions on digital literacy; Kleiman (2014), about heterogeneous and dynamic language present in the virtual context in addition to Rojo (2013), Kress (2003, 2010), Kress, Leite-Garcia e Van Leeuwen (2000) with studies on multimodality field. We also mention debates about Applied Linguistics and interactivity and, finally, we present the description of a webpage Instagram seeking to expand the debate about linguistic interactions in the digital environment through social networks.

A Social-Semiotic Approach to Color Analysis in Digital Media

André de Oliveira Matumoto — 2024-10-11

This article aims to discuss the study of color from a social-semiotic perspective. The article begins with an overview of Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen’s distinctive feature approach to color in their Grammar of Visual Design (2021) and concludes that the authors base their claims primarily on paintings and print media, which may skew the categories toward analog media. Drawing on color theory, mainly the contributions of Rhyne (2017), this article argues that social-semiotic analyzes can benefit from systematized and quantitative categories for color analysis, especially for digital media corpora. The article introduces several analytic categories, such as color harmony and the RGB color space, that are relevant to understanding how color works in digital spaces. The paper proposes the use of the free and open source software GIMP and ImageMagick for a qualitative and quantitative approach to the distinctive features of color and for a better understanding of the complexity of colors and their meaning potential. Based on these methodological procedures, the distinctive feature approach is revised with Rhyne’s contribution. Finally, the categories are applied to two stock images as a case study.