This study critically explores the representation of ideologies across the verbal and visual modes in 15 articles and photographs from local Spanish-language print media with the goal of determining the potential for minoritized semiotic texts to challenge the negative semiotic treatment of Latin@ immigrants in the United States. Following a critical social semiotic approach, the analysis of intersemiotic relationships demonstrates that approximately half of the semiotic texts analyzed communicate an overall transformative message by challenging the negative representations of Latin@s in (...) the mainstream media. The strong presence of transformative ideologies in the verbal and visual modes underscores the potential for Spanish-language media to represent Latin@s as powerful social actors who stand up to negative treatment through activism. Moreover, the contrast of ideologies across the verbal and visual modes may incite the audience to participate in activism that supports Latin@ immigrants in the United States. (shrink)

This paper proposes a methodological approach to the study of discourses in the hybrid media system (Chadwick, 2013). The hybrid media system is defined as a new type of system in which traditional and emerging media are assembled, changed and flow gradually to create new forms. One form of hybridization is the relationship between social networks and television, in which both media model and build each other. Various studies (Gruber, 2017; Vaccari et al., 2016) have demonstrated the importance of the (...) study of hybrid media system to explore the construction of meanings in new media contexts, especially in political contexts. This study is part of a qualitative paradigm that incorporates the principles of critical discourse analysis for the analysis of semiotic resources used in 30,000 tweets with hashtags of five Chilean political television programs broadcast during 2016, which promote online public debate and participation. Based on the analysis of online texts and television programs, it was established that the argumentative strategies and resources used constituted an expansion of the televised political debate and a space for interaction of social network users with traditional media. The decision to directly involve these users in television programs has implications for the understanding of the symbolic limits of the policy. The inclusion of new actors has the potential to model the quality of debate and argumentation in the digitally mediated public sphere. (shrink)

ABSTRACTI compare M.A.K. Halliday’s metafunctional system with Jay Lemke’s for the purposes of doing Critical Discourse Analysis. The differences I foreground turn specifically on notions of context and the distinction that Kenneth Burke makes between scientistic and dramatistic approaches to the analysis of meaning. I use a corpus of political and journalistic texts on ‘austerity’ discourses, and two examples from creative arts research projects, to demonstrate differences in the contextual potentials of the two systems that have implications for critical analysis. (...) The analysis highlights differences in what Burke describes as analytic range and circumference, and differences in directionality between the two systems. Halliday’s metafunctions provide a gateway into deeper and more detailed analysis of language, directing analysis into aspects of the text below the level of the clause. Lemke’s is an action focused, two-way semiotic interface between cultural groups and the meanings they make, whether by means of language alone or by multimodal means, and demands that analysis begin with culture. (shrink)