New Discourse on Language: Functional Perspectives on Multimodality, Identity, and Affiliation

280 Pages·2010·3.28 MB·English

by  Monika Bednarek

New Discourse on Language
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New Discourse on Language
Functional Perspectives on
Multimodality, Identity, and Affi liation
Edited by Monika Bednarek
and J. R. Martin
Continuum International Publishing Group
The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane
11 York Road Suite 704
London SE1 7NX New York NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com
© Monika Bednarek, J. R. Martin and contributors 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-8470-6483-7 (hardback)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn
Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
Chapter 1: Semantic Variation – Modelling Realisation, Instantiation
and Individuation in Social Semiosis 1
J. R. Martin
Chapter 2: Wrinkling Complexity: Concepts of Identity and Affi liation
in Humour 35
Naomi K. Knight
Chapter 3: Making Metre Mean: Identity and Affi liation in the Rap
Music of Kanye West 59
David Caldwell
Chapter 4: ข่าวหน้าหนึ่ง (Khao naa nung): A Multimodal Analysis of
Thai-language Newspaper Front Pages 80
John S. Knox, Pattama Patpong and Yupaporn Piriyasilpa
Chapter 5: Doubling-up: Allusion and Bonding in Multisemiotic
News Stories 111
Helen Caple
Chapter 6: Playing with ‘femininity’: An Intermodal Analysis of the
Bilingual Picture Book The Ballad of Mulan 134
Ping Tian
Chapter 7: Imagining Communities: A Multifunctional Approach to
Identity Management in Texts 163
Ken Tann
Chapter 8: Intersemiotic Relations as Logogenetic Patterns: Towards
the Restoration of the Time Dimension in
Hypertext Description 195
Sumin Zhao
vi Contents
Chapter 9: The Coupling of Gesture and Phonology 219
Michele Zappavigna, Chris Cléirigh, Paul Dwyer and
J. R. Martin
Chapter 10: Corpus Linguistics and Systemic Functional Linguistics:
Interpersonal Meaning, Identity and Bonding
in Popular Culture 237
Monika Bednarek
Index 267
Notes on Contributors
Monika Bednarek is Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Sydney. She is
the author of Evaluation in Media Discourse (2006, Continuum), Emotion Talk
across Corpora (2008, Palgrave Macmillan) and guest editor of a special issue of
Functions of Language 15(1) on evaluation.
David Caldwell is a PhD candidate from the University of Sydney where he is
applying social semiotics from Systemic Functional Linguistics to the rap music
of Kanye West. As a discourse analyst, he has investigated the interpersonal
features of language in a number of contexts, including rap music, AFL post-
match interviews, and medical consultations.
Helen Caple is a lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University
of Wollongong, Australia. Her PhD with the Department of Linguistics at the
University of Sydney analysed the semiotic landscape between press photo-
graphs and the verbiage accompanying them. Her research interests include
visual storytelling and the representation of sportswomen in the media. She
also lectures in Media Discourse, Journalism Studies and is a former press
photographer.
Chris Cléirigh is a Research Fellow and Research Associate in the Department
of Linguistics at the University of Sydney. His research interests include model-
ling language as a complex adaptive system and he is currently writing a book
relating language to other complex systems.
Paul Dwyer is Chair of the Department of Performance Studies at the
University of Sydney. His publications on the use of theatre practices in health,
education and welfare settings have appeared in Research in Drama Education,
New Theatre Quarterly, Modern Drama, Australasian Drama Studies and Applied
Theatre Researcher. He is currently investigating ‘restorative justice’ practices in
the NSW juvenile justice system (in collaboration with Jim Martin and Michele
Zappavigna) in parallel with ongoing fi eld research on the post-war reconcilia-
tion process in Bougainville (PNG).
viii Notes on Contributors
Naomi K. Knight is a PhD candidate in the Department of Linguistics at the
University of Sydney. She is the co-editor of Questioning Linguistics (2008) and
co-convener of the International Free Linguistics Conference with Dr Ahmar
Mahboob. She has published in the areas of conversational humour, discourse
analysis, systemic functional linguistics, and sociolinguistics, and has also
been involved in projects in ape language studies involving data of language-
competent apes Kanzi and Panbanisha.
John S. Knox is a lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie
University, Sydney, where he teaches on the postgraduate programs in Applied
Linguistics. His research interests include media discourse, language in educa-
tion, multimodality, and Systemic Functional Linguistics.
J. R. Martin is Professor of Linguistics (Personal Chair) at the University of
Sydney. His research interests include systemic theory, functional grammar,
discourse semantics, register, genre, multimodality and critical discourse
analysis, focusing on English and Tagalog – with special reference to the trans-
disciplinary fi elds of educational linguistics, forensic linguistics and social
semiotics. Recent publications include The Language of Evaluation (with Peter
White), Palgrave 2005; Language, Knowledge and Pedagogy (edited with Fran
Christie), Continuum 2007; and with David Rose, a second edition of Working
with Discourse (Continuum 2007), and a book on genre (Genre Relations:
Mapping Culture, Equinox 2008). He has recently completed a 2nd edition of
the 1997 functional grammar workbook, with Clare Painter and Christian
Matthiessen, Deploying Functional Grammar (in press with the Commercial Press,
Beijing). Professor Martin was elected a fellow the Australian Academy of the
Humanities in 1998, and awarded a Centenary Medal for his services to Linguis-
tics and Philology in 2003.
Pattama Patpong is the Program Chair of the PhD Program (Linguistics) in the
Institute of Language and Culture for Rural Development, Mahidol University,
Thailand. Her research interests include Thai, minority languages in Thailand,
language typology, discourse analysis, and Systemic Functional Linguistics.
Yupaporn Piriyasilpa teaches English at Rajamangala University of Technology
Isan, Khon Kaen Campus, Thailand. She completed her PhD in Linguistics at
Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Her research interest is genre and
discourse in online communication.
Ken Tann lectures at the University of Sydney on the application of linguistic
research to identity issues in undergraduate and postgraduate programs. He
adopts an interdisciplinary approach to discourse analysis, and his publications
Notes on Contributors ix
include work on both the English and Japanese languages, particularly in
relation to nationalism and identity politics.
Ping Tian is currently a PhD candidate of Linguistics at the University of
Sydney. Her research interests include social semiotics, multimodality, SFL and
intercultural communication.
Michele Zappavigna is a post-doctoral research fellow in the Department of
Linguistics at the University of Sydney. Her major research interest is electronic
discourse and the construal of motherhood online. She also has an ongoing
fascination with text visualization as a tool to aid discourse analysts. Michele is
currently working with Jim Martin and Paul Dwyer investigating NSW Youth
Justice Conferencing, a form of restorative justice, using multimodal discourse
analysis. She completed her PhD on language, tacit knowledge and technology
in the School of Information Technologies.
Sumin Zhao is currently completing her PhD thesis on children’s educational
e-texts. As a part of an Australian Research Council Discovery Project, her
research explores the dynamic relations between language and other semiotic
recourses in hypermedia texts and the ways in which these resources are
employed to construe the fi eld of knowledge, primary history and social science
in particular. She also publishes in school literacy, SFL and multimodal
discourse analysis.