“Ensuring readers’/viewers’ continued interest in a story requires that they are aware of the goals of one or more protagonists, and make an emotional investment in their success or failure; we hope that the hero or heroine will succeed, and fear that the villain will. We thus empathize with the story’s good guy(s)/girl(s) and antipathize with its bad ones. Of course goodness and badness can be complicated affairs, and we may end up having mixed feelings about characters”

http://comicsforum.org/2012/02/10/the-visualization-of-anger-in-comics-by-charles-forceville/

Author: Dr. Assimakis Tseronis

Title: “Discursive and visual analysis of ethos”

Abstract: In classical rhetoric, ethos constitutes one of the three technical means of persuasion, according to which the orator seeks to create a certain image of himself in order to appear credible to his audience. In contemporary argumentation studies, the concept of ethos is used in order to explain certain choices made by language users as to their effectiveness in enhancing the persuasiveness of the message produced. When it comes to the discursive analysis of ethos, verbal and textual elements such as the following are studied: choice of vocabulary, information structure, and style, among others. In this presentation, I am interested in searching for parallel visual elements that may exist at the disposal of image makers when constructing their ethos visually. I will specifically look at some examples taken from printed advertisements. This endeavour is a preliminary step to a larger research project that I am about to start, in which argumentation studies meet visual and multimodal analysis.

Assimakis Tseronis holds a PhD from the University of Leyden. In March 2012 he will embark on the post-doc project “Multimodal Rhetoric and cognition.” He will do research and teach both in the Media Studies and Rhetoric departments of University of Amsterdam.

Author: Mathias Madsen

Title: “Metaphor Systems and the Window Myth”

Abstract: How do we understand analogies? We can agree that “politics is like theatre,” but how do we know what that means?

Cognitive metaphor theory provides one answer: We communicate in metaphors because we think in metaphors. Analogies are used to carry knowledge over from concrete domains onto abstract ones. Communication just a shadow of that system at work.

I propose an alternative: Interpretation is more like strategic guessing, and analogies evolve meaning just like all other utterances do.

So instead of looking for “conceptual systems,” we should return to the only important question in communication: What did you mean when you said that?

This has profound consequences for metaphor theory: When we take the evidence seriously, the distinctions between metaphorical and literal, abstract and concrete, and immediate and mediated all turn out to be incoherent.

Mathias Madsen studied at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and holds a BA in mathematics (2005), and an MA in IT and Cognition (2010), the latter having close links to computational linguistics. He started his PhD, in which he will include pragmatic angles, at the University of Amsterdam in September 2011.

“Multimodal metaphor is the first book that specially discusses metaphors in contemporary social life and their multimodal usage. The most valuable part of this book is its discussion of metaphorical modes’ definition, classification, and application”

Review of Multimodal Metaphor in Intercultural Pragmatics 2011

Where is the pain in the videogame?

A vast majority of violent videogames today is structured around the idea of a character that advances through the game world by perpetrating body damage in others while avoiding damage himself. As a result, the idea of an animated body that can be perceived as wounded is fundamental for videogame design, even thought at the same time, the image of body damage is not always perceptually or narratively connected with the idea of physical  suffering.

This presentation will inquire how, when, and why (or not) is pain integrated in the gaming experience, the difficulties of reconstructing and communicating  this experience in this medium, the implications that accompany the production of such  images, and the mediation of suffering that is taking place within them.

Natalia Sánchez Querubín

RMA Media Studies

natalia.san.que@gmail.com

“Darwin in the humanities curriculum”

Cognitivist approaches are highly compatible with a paradigm that is quickly gaining ground in the humanities: the evolutionary paradigm. Where the dominant view in the humanities is that art and communication are primarily determined by culture, evolutionary views emphasize that it is much more sensible to consider them first and foremost as rooted in basic human needs: shelter, food, water, safety, sex, respect, satisfaction … – that is, in nature. The human species is, ultimately, a very highly developed animal. Studying art and communication should therefore be
understood as a matter of “gene culture co-evolution” (Carroll et al. 2010: 213).

In this talk I will briefly elaborate on the “gene” part of this idea by highlighting insights from the following three books:

(1) Boyd, Brian (2009). On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. Cambridge,
Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
(2) Boyd, Brian, Joseph Carroll, and Jonathan Gottschall, eds (2010). Evolution, Literature & Film.
New York: Columbia University Press.
(3) Tomasello, Michael (2008). Origins of Human Communication. Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press.

“Mark Johnson’s new monograph pursues the research line of the earlier books he published, together with George Lakoff and on his own (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999; Johnson 1987, 1993), but breaks exciting new ground by its explicit focus on the non-propositional and non-verbal aspects of cognition…”

Forceville, Charles (2008). Review of Mark Johnson, The Meaning of the Body (University of Chicago Press 2007). Metaphor and Symbol 23: 292 – 297. [ChF, November 2011]

Download Review

Title: Multimodal realisation of conceptual structures on websites

In this talk I will present a cognitive perspective on the analysis of websites as multimodal texts. In doing so, I try to show how the analytical model for websites by Martinec & van Leeuwen (2008) can be further developed, and how cognitive semantics can contribute to greater adequacy in multimodal website analysis.

Martinec & van Leeuwen argue that websites as multimodal text are structured by underlying semantic patterns that combine images, text, sound, typography and other modes into meaningful text units. An analysis of websites must therefore first examine the underlying patterns, and second the realization of these patterns into an interface.
In order to get a better understanding of the organizing principles of the patterns and how they can be realised multimodally in the website interface, I propose that the patterns are to be understood as conceptual structures, and that these structures and their projection are always manifested by the use of multiple semiotic modes (Hurtienne & Blessing 2007, Forceville & Urios-Aparisi 2009).  By combining social semiotic multimodality theory and cognitive semantics, it becomes possible to map out the conceptual structures of a website in greater detail as well as to pinpoint how different semiotic modes contribute to realising parts of these structures.

After a short presentation of the theory, I will demonstrate how it can be applied in an analysis of a website. Finally, I will discuss some of the advantages and challenges of combining a multimodal framework and cognitive theory.

Søren Vigild Poulsen
Ph.d.-student
Institute of Language and Communication
University of Southern Denmark
vigild@sdu.dk
Tel. +45 6550 9134
Web  http://www.sdu.dk/ansat/vigild.aspx

How Neuroscience Changes, Complicates, and Complements Contemporary
Film Studies.

Abstract: As a result of recent research discoveries and technological advancements within neuroscience, a growing interest in the brain and its functions permeates not only film studies, but also the field of humanities as a whole. Yet, the neuroscientific influence on contemporary film studies is not easily defined; on the contrary, film scholars with different starting points identify fundamentally diverse aspects both problematic and intriguing (Grodal 2009; Carroll 2008; Pisters 2008). The aim of my research is to scrutinize the three-folded question: how does neuroscience change, complicate and possibly complement contemporary film studies? In this exploratory paper, I will discuss the potential changes to the film studies methodology, the ethical considerations of the increasingly complex relationship between audience and producer, as well as some possible hypotheses for testing utilizing neuroscientific methods.

emilstjernholm-multimodaldiscourse

“I propose that relevance theory and blending theory are intrinsically linked.  I posit that a higher cognitive  effect (pleasure) depends upon the relevance of the input presented in a film. To  illustrate this, I will provide a systematic, multimodal analysis of three scenes in Scott  Pilgrim vs. The World (2010).  This film was selected as an object of study due its  particular reliance on pop cultural and multimedia implicatures that require the  perceiver to draw on their specific cognitive environment in order to make sense of  the implicit inferences inherent in the conceptual blends”.

Download complete essay:

APSchempp Multimodality revised 10-2011