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 Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis

Multimodal
Critical Discourse Monuments
and
Analysis Memorials in
Changing
Halliday’s work has also Societies: A
contributed many of its Semiotic and
analytical tools for the
Geographical
kind of linguistic
Approach
analysis carried out in
Critical Discourse By Federico Bellentani
Analysis (CDA). CDA is Monuments and
probably the most memorials are built
Andrea Mayr comprehensive attempt forms with
to develop a theory of commemorative as
the inter-connectedness of discourse, power well as political
and ideology. The term ‘critical’ principally functions. They can
means unravelling or ‘denaturalizing’ ideologies articulate selective
expressed in discourse and revealing how power historical narratives
structures are constructed and negotiated in focusing attention on
and through discourse. CDA research specifically convenient events and
analyses institutional, political, gender and individuals, while
media discourses which ‘testify to more or less obliterating what is
overt relations of struggle and conflict’ (Wodak discomforting […] 
2001: 2). Because of its solid analytical
foundation, Halliday’s work helps CDA
practitioners to ground concerns about power
and ideology in the detailed analysis of
language. Both fields also share the view of
language as socially constructed: language both
shapes and is shaped by society.
FOCUS ON
Although the general thrust in CDA has been GESTURES
towards the analysis of linguistic structures, – in the past, present,
more recently there has been a visual turn and future The special
inspired by scholars who have incorporated exhibition “Gestures –
visual images into concepts of discourse and in the past, present,
have moved towards broader multimodal and future” will run
conceptions (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996; from 17 November
Machin 2007). This extension of CDA into visual 2017 to 4 March 2018
semiotics also has its origins in early Hallidayan at the Saxon Museum
theory which maintains that language is only of Industry. It looks at
one semiotic resource out of many and that […]
several forms of representations, linguistic and
non-linguistic, are used in the construction of
discourse. For example, while political and
ideological views of newspapers can be
expressed in the choice of different vocabularies
(e.g. ‘resistance fighters’ vs. ‘insurgents’) and
different grammatical structures (e.g. active vs.
passive constructions), visual structures in the
form of images just as much can convey Ecosemiotic
ideological meanings. Applying some of the Paradigm for
linguistic principles found in SFL, Multimodal Nature and
Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) therefore Culture:
shows how images, photographs, diagrams and
Transdisciplin
graphics also work to create meanings
communicated by a text, which are often more
ary
implicit or indirect than language. Explorations
in the
The work of Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) in Cybernetics of
particular has developed a set of tools derived
Learning,
from SFL that allows us to study the choices of
Adapting,
visual features as well as lexical and
grammatical choices in language. One of these
Understandin 
tools is social actor analysis (van Leeuwen, 1996), g & Knowing.
a linguistic and visual inventory of the ways we During the days from
can describe and classify people and some of July 9th to 12th, 2018
the ideological effects that these classifications in The Silesian
can have. According to van Leeuwen, people can Botanical Garden the
be personalized or impersonalized, represented conference will be held
as specific individuals or as generic types. under the title:
Certain naming strategies therefore foreground Ecosemiotic Paradigm
aspects of a person’s identity while for Nature and Culture:
backgrounding others. To illustrate this, let us Transdisciplinary
briefly look at media representations of young Explorations in the
people which often construct them as a Cybernetics of
problem. For example, in the following Learning, […]
headlines taken from British (tabloid)
newspapers

Hoodies to be banned from shopping centre

Yobs rule streets

International
Hoodie bike yobs attack teacher Association
for Semiotics
Teenage mother was shot down by hoodies.
of space
(IASSp/AISE)
Moscow, Russia
We find that by impersonalizing young people September 2018
as ‘hoodies’ and ‘yobs’, they are “objectivised” “Heterotopia and the
and turned into generic types. A tabloid semiotics of cultural
newspaper may refer to them as ‘hoodies’ landscape” The
throughout an article, obscuring who exactly cultural landscape is a
these young people are who may have part of the
experienced poor education, have had few semiosphere, the
opportunities and have little to gain from and result and catalyst of
contribute to mainstream society. processes of the
cultural genesis and
semiosis leaving their
traces […]

Visually, often accompanying images are chosen
with stereotypical and generic portrayals of
these ‘hoodies’ on housing estates. In the image
below, we see three generic ‘hoodies’, with one
looking straight at the viewer. Kress and van
Leeuwen would call this a ‘demand’ image act,
drawing on Halliday’s (1985) notion of speech
acts. Just like the language, the imagery used –
the generic picture of threatening young men in
hooded tops and tracksuits – foregrounds their
deviance and backgrounds structural reasons.
Images like this are not meant to document but
symbolize a certain type of young people.
Language and image are used to form part of
wider media discourses on young people that
are ideological in the sense that they create
patterns of inclusion (‘teenage mother’ as one 
of ‘us’) and exclusion (‘yob’ and ‘hoodies’ as
others) and direct attention away from the links
between poverty, lack of opportunity and
deviance that often characterize the lives of
these young people.

This brief discussion has served to illustrate the

important role Halliday’s ideas have played in
research conducted in CDA. Looking at
language and images from a combined SFL and
CDA approach means that we can begin to
grasp how language and visuals are chosen in a
given situation and also to suggest why certain
communicative choices are made and not
others.

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2 COMMENTS ON MULTIMODAL
CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Bodil Hedeboe APRIL

11, 2012 AT 7:06 AM

With due respect to the concepts of the

analysis, I’d say that in fact the media
did not CHOOSE the hoods, did they?
The young people chose them!! They
communicate the exclusion, in fact that
is their goal! Of course, hence, the media
‘support’ the goal by creating patterns
of language to describe the groups. But 
we need both parts of the
communication in an analysis like this.
Also, the social analysis must be more
than a prejudized comment:
The young people may very well be poor
and lack opportunities, poor things, or
they may in fact come from quite the
opposite background. Actually, similar
hooded groups in Copenhagen
terrorizing the streets are bored sons
and daughters of the very rich middle
class living in huge villas and driving fast
cars north of Copenhagen.
It would be sad, I think, if the potentials
of sfl discourse concepts and the social
analysis result in this kind of monologic
analysis.

Jiaying Lu MAY 7, 2014

AT 3:21 PM

In your book there is a new definition

“MCDA-multimodal critical discourse
analysis”, But I‘m a little confused,
what’s the difference between MCDA
and MMDA (Multimodal discourse
analysis), which first mentioned by
Gunther Kress.

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