This study proposes that metonymy is fundamental to visual meaning making and develops a social semiotic framework to elucidate how conceptual metonymies are realized in both static and moving images. While we all accept that visual images are iconic, this study demonstrates systematically that they are also indexical (i.e. metonymic), in terms of their representation of both objects/events and abstract concepts. Based on the social semiotic visual grammar of Kress and Van Leeuwen’s Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (2006), systems of metonymy in actional, reactional, classificational and analytical processes are developed to map out the types of metonymies in visual representation. The metonymy systems bring a wide array of resources under a coherent framework for analysts to scrutinize the choices of representation in visual media such as comics, film and TV commercial. This study develops current theories of multimodal metaphor and metonymy, on the one hand, and provides new insights into the process of visual meaning making, on the other.
This paper investigates the representation of social values and their ontogenetic development in English as a foreign language (EFL) textbooks in Hong Kong. Adopting a social semiotic approach, it considers social values in textbooks as semantic categories which are constructed by complex semiotic discursive resources, and develops an explicit framework to model what values are selected and how the values are constructed. Analysis of 19 textbooks from Primary 1 to Secondary 4-6 shows that the social values change from the personal domain (e.g. good hygiene and healthy lifestyle), through the interpersonal domain (e.g. politeness and respect), to the altruistic concern for all mankind. The result also suggests that the textbooks are more concerned with the didactic education of good citizens than with cultivating children's critical thinking. The analytical framework and the findings can be used for the explicit instruction and critical analysis of social values in English language teaching.
The Occupy Central Movement was the biggest protest in Hong Kong in decades and caused an unprecedented division of opinion in society. Reports about the event in local Chinese media were remarkably different in stance and attitude. To understand the ideological dissonances and their linguistic construction, this article analyzes a corpus of 120 reports on the Occupy Central Movement from four major Chinese newspapers in Hong Kong, namely, Apple Daily, Ming Pao, Oriental Daily News and Ta Kung Pao, which cover the political spectrum from anti-Beijing to pro-Beijing. In total, 856 concordance lines of the two selected words ‘佔中’ ( occupy Central) and ‘佔領’ ( occupy) were annotated using the Attitude framework. Analysis shows that their attitudes toward the event form a continuum from supportive, through neutral, to antipathic. The attitudes do not simply reflect the stances of the newspapers, but are strategically selected and designed to legitimize or delegitimize the event. The pattern of attitudes reflects the ideological divergence in Hong Kong society, and at the same time, the news reports also exacerbate the divergence by reinforcing the attitudes of their readers.
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