Bringing a museum of language to life: the use of multimodal resources for interactional engagement in the Museu da Língua Portuguesa, Brazil

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The popular and highly successful Museu da Língua Portuguesa 1 in São Paulo, Brazil, is renowned for its visitor engagement strategies. While this success is often attributed to high levels of technological interactivity enabled in the museum displays, we argue that the success of the museum also comes from a range of other multimodal resources. Using a social semiotic approach to spatial discourse analysis, we examine each of the three levels/floors of the museum, identifying the various meaning-making resources across the representational, organizational, and interactional metafunctions. These both differentiate the separate levels of the museum, and bring them together as a unified whole, creating a strong focus on cultural identity and on placing the visitor in the centre of meaning-making practices. KEYWORDS: Museu da Língua Portuguesa; multimodal resources; social semiotic approach; interactive engagement; spatial discourse analysis. 522 RESUMO:O popular e bem-sucedido Museu da Língua Portuguesa na cidade de São Paulo (Brasil) é famoso por suas estratégias de engajamento utilizadas com os seus visitantes. Embora esse sucesso seja frequentemente atribuído ao alto nível de interatividade tecnológica disponível nas exibições do museu, argumentamos que seu sucesso pode também advir de uma série de outros recursos multimodais. A partir de uma abordagem sociossemiótica de análise de discurso espacial, examinamos cada um dos três níveis/andares do museu, identificando os vários recursos de construção de sentido através das metafunções representacional, organizacional e interacional. Esses recursos diferenciam os níveis distintos do museu, mas também os aproximam, criando um foco intenso em relação à identidade cultural e colocando o/a visitante no centro de práticas de construção de sentido. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Museu da Língua Portuguesa; recursos multimodais; abordagem sociossemiótica; engajamento interativo; análise de discurso espacial.

Equality, marginalisation, and hegemonic negotiation: Embodied understandings of the built and designed environment

“…The selected submissions are analysed using Spatial Discourse Analysis (SpDA) (Ravelli and McMurtrie, 2016), a framework for investigating the meaning-making potential of the built environment, with SpDA originally coined by McMurtrie (2011). SpDA has been applied to, for instance, interactional meaning and history in museums, aesthetics of residential high-rises, and affect at international airports (Björkvall et al, 2020; McMurtrie, 2020; Ravelli and Heberle, 2016; Ravelli and Wu, 2022).…”

The Happiest Place on Earth

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Drawing on insights from a social semiotic perspective as proposed by Halliday (1985), and its adaptation to the grammar of visual design (KRESS; VAN LEEUWEN, 2006), and spatial discourse analysis (RAVELLI, 2000, RAVELLI;HEBERLE, 2016), this article aims to analyze semiotic resources used in EPCOT's World Showcase, Disney World, Florida, USA, specifically, the eleven thematic pavilions in the attraction. The analysis considered the three metafunctions, adapted from Halliday (1985) to investigate images (KRESS; VAN LEEUWEN, 2006) as well as physical spaces (RAVELLI, 2000).

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“…In 2006, Ravelli could further develop the analytical framework to investigate physical spaces concerning museums as objects of study. Accordingly, Ravelli and Heberle (2016) analyze the Museu da Língua Portuguesa, in Brazil. Nevertheless, the use of a social semiotic approach in the analysis of physical spaces is relatively new in academia, representing an increasing interest in studies of Multimodality.…”

“…Based on these analytical frameworks, the present study follows the pattern of analysis used in Ravelli (2000) and Ravelli and Heberle's (2016) studies, considering the World Showcase as a spatial text.…”