Joint seminar for General Linguistics and English Language and Linguistics. In SOL:H402 or via zoom at https://lu-se.zoom.us/j/63263453894

Abstract: 

Multimodality and semiotics scholarship is in need of an inclusive model of communication that takes into account the identities of the communicator, the audience, as well as their relation, and that does not privilege specific media and/or modes over others. The contours of such a model exist in relevance theory/RT (Sperber and Wilson 1995), whose central claim is that each act of communication comes with the presumption of optimal relevance to the envisaged audience. Hitherto RT scholars (typically: linguists) have almost exclusively analysed face-to-face exchanges. To fulfil RT’s potential to develop into an inclusive theory of communication, it is necessary to explore how it can be adapted and refined to account for (1) messages in other modes than (only) the verbal mode; and (2) mass-communication. In Forceville (2020) I propose how RT works for mass-communicative messages that involve static visuals. In my presentation I will specifically focus on how RT approaches the key issue of which factors have an impact on the interpretation of a picture or a multimodal message, discussing this issue by drawing on examples from different genres (logos & pictograms, advertisements, and cartoons).

 

Charles Forceville bio:

Charles Forceville is associate professor in the Film/Media Studies department of Universiteit van Amsterdam, NL. The key theme in his research is the question how visuals, alone or in combination with other modes, convey meaning. Committed to cognitivist and relevance-theoretic approaches, he writes on multimodality in various genres and media (documentary, animation, fiction film, advertising, comics, cartoons, pictograms & traffic signs, pictures in children’s books). He published Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising (Routledge, 1996). With Eduardo Urios-Aparisi he edited Multimodal Metaphor (Mouton de Gruyter, 2009); with Tony Veale and Kurt Feyaerts Creativity and the Agile Mind (Mouton de Gruyter, 2013); and with Assimakis Tseronis Multimodal Argumentation and Rhetoric in Media Genres (Benjamins, 2017). His monograph Visual and Multimodal Communication: Applying the Relevance Principle appeared in 2020 (Oxford University Press).

Under his guidance, students of HKU Utrecht made a series of five short animation film on narratology (and one on the JOURNEY metaphor), available on YouTube (2014-2019). Forceville has profiles on Researchgate.net and Academia.edu.