Seminar | Analysing (media) texts with multimodal critical discourse analysis

Aula M, Palazzo Wollemborg, Dipartimento SPGI

23.06.2023

Scientific coordinator: Francesca Helm, University of Padua.

Seminar with Prof. Andrea Mayr (Zayed University, UAE).

The event will be held on 23 june 2023, at 2:00 PM at Room B2 (Palazzo Ca' Borin). 

The data for analysis we encounter today, such as university web pages, online news sites, YouTube clips, or our social media feeds, employ all sorts of semiotic resources that are skillfully combined for certain communicative purposes. While we are vaguely aware of the effects on us when we are addressed, we tend not to have the analytical tools that allow us to identify more specifically how these resources work to create meaning.

In this seminar, we discuss some of the research tools and methods we can use to look beyond the surface meanings of language and visuals, using a multi-modal approach to reveal certain underlying discourses, ideas, and values. These tools can reveal how language and visuals are used to shape and define a set of events and alert us to how they seek to influence us in even the most mundane settings. Looking at a number of case studies from media, we will explore how this semiotic approach can help us to understand the role of language and discourse in the functioning of society and politics today.

Andrea Mayr is Lecturer in Media and Communication at Zayed University, UAE, where she works in the fields of Critical Discourse Analysis and Multimodality with a particular interest in (digital) media activism, crime and deviance and ideologies in institutional discourses. Her publications include Language andPower (2008; 2019) and How to Do Critical DiscourseAnalysis: A Multimodal Introduction (2023).