International Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
Korean video culture has changed from a broadcast-focused culture into a diversified experience that includes a variety of videos from both domestic and global streaming services. Contrary to the mainstream view that Netflix is at the centre of all changes, this study positions the domestic streamers’ original content as not necessarily a direct response to Netflix but indicative of the many changes that were already occurring in the local media landscape. Their content has adapted to fit viewers’ changing lifestyles and desire for stories not seen on television. Efficient everyday storytelling fits into viewers’ busy commuter lifestyles and features mundane topics that they can easily identify with. Also, the domestic streamers cater to small, underserved audiences with regard to specific topics avoided by traditional media. Thus, the original content of domestic streamers indicates that they offer different value propositions than formulaic romance stories by broadcasters and the high-end, large-scale original dramas of subscription video on demand (SVOD).
Book review: Arnulf Deppermann and Michael Haugh (eds), Action Ascription in Interaction
Discourse &Communication, Volume 17, Issue 5, Page 695-697, October 2023.
Extra cues extra views: A multimodal detection of Arabic clickbait thumbnail verbo-visual cues
Discourse &Communication, Ahead of Print.
In this article, we investigate how the visual, interactional, and interactive verbo-visual selections are utilized to qualify Arabic clickbait thumbnails to get extra views. To this end, we drew upon Kress and Van Leeuwen’s multimodal analysis and Hyland’s meta-discourse framework. The data comprised 100 Arabic YouTube clickbait thumbnails selected from five Arabic channels. Our analysis revealed that a fake clickbait is an ensemble of collaborative modes, each of which reflects an interplay of interactional, compositional, and representational strategic selections. Thumbnail creators tend to structure their thumbnails visually by frequently selecting negative representational actional and reactional processes to induce viewers to click the videos for further information. To accentuate the representational metafunction, the content creators opted for enticing engagement markers and interactive linguistic cataphoric cues that lead the viewers to search for the referents disguised in the videos associated with thumbnails. Emojis, sequences of exclamation marks, and consecutive dots were also used as pressure tactics to click the videos. Such results will hopefully contribute to recognizing fake visual media and raise vulnerable viewers’ awareness against such fake videos.
In this article, we investigate how the visual, interactional, and interactive verbo-visual selections are utilized to qualify Arabic clickbait thumbnails to get extra views. To this end, we drew upon Kress and Van Leeuwen’s multimodal analysis and Hyland’s meta-discourse framework. The data comprised 100 Arabic YouTube clickbait thumbnails selected from five Arabic channels. Our analysis revealed that a fake clickbait is an ensemble of collaborative modes, each of which reflects an interplay of interactional, compositional, and representational strategic selections. Thumbnail creators tend to structure their thumbnails visually by frequently selecting negative representational actional and reactional processes to induce viewers to click the videos for further information. To accentuate the representational metafunction, the content creators opted for enticing engagement markers and interactive linguistic cataphoric cues that lead the viewers to search for the referents disguised in the videos associated with thumbnails. Emojis, sequences of exclamation marks, and consecutive dots were also used as pressure tactics to click the videos. Such results will hopefully contribute to recognizing fake visual media and raise vulnerable viewers’ awareness against such fake videos.
Multiply‐translated Chaucer in the Korean classroom
Abstract
This paper introduces a teaching experiment that uses a set of local translations of a European medieval text—in this case, Korean translations of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales—as teaching texts in the Korean classroom alongside the original work. Students compare a range of translations dating from all periods of the 20th century, including one from as early as 1915 and others from the 1960s, 1980s, and 2000s. Tracking the variety of translation methods and different linguistic and artistic choices employed by these multiple translations allows even students unfamiliar with Middle English to gain a better sense of the particulars of Chaucer's language and character-making. Treating translation itself as a creative mode, this paper argues that even bad translations and messy histories of linguistic interference can be put to productive pedagogical use. Recuperated local translation archives can be used in the teaching of Middle English literature by helping students understand Chaucer's own positionality as a translator and compiler. Such archives also contribute to the study of comparative literature more broadly as they present case studies of how ideas of world literature are formed over time and space, and encourage a critical engagement with the canon even as it is being taught.
Digital resistance: Discursive construction of polarization and otherness in Oduduwa secessionists’ social media discourse
Discourse &Society, Ahead of Print.
This paper investigates the discursive strategies employed by Oduduwa secessionists to construct polarization and otherness on Twitter. Using the socio-cognitive approach to CDA combined with social media CDA, the study illustrates how socio-cultural and spatiotemporal contexts are embedded in digital performances of resistance. Findings show that the secessionists employ four main discursive strategies, namely: (1) vitriolic socio-cognitive labels and coinages; (2) generalization and ethnocentrism; (3) language of threat; and (4) use of Yoruba language to legitimize their resistance, accentuate their ideological stances, construct polarization and otherness, and do social mobilization. These strategies are achieved via discursive, linguistic, and stylo-orthographic resources made available by digital technology. The paper concludes that the discursive strategies employed by the secessionists do not directly reflect polarization but are simply constitutive of it.
This paper investigates the discursive strategies employed by Oduduwa secessionists to construct polarization and otherness on Twitter. Using the socio-cognitive approach to CDA combined with social media CDA, the study illustrates how socio-cultural and spatiotemporal contexts are embedded in digital performances of resistance. Findings show that the secessionists employ four main discursive strategies, namely: (1) vitriolic socio-cognitive labels and coinages; (2) generalization and ethnocentrism; (3) language of threat; and (4) use of Yoruba language to legitimize their resistance, accentuate their ideological stances, construct polarization and otherness, and do social mobilization. These strategies are achieved via discursive, linguistic, and stylo-orthographic resources made available by digital technology. The paper concludes that the discursive strategies employed by the secessionists do not directly reflect polarization but are simply constitutive of it.
Book review: Political Myth-Making, Nationalist Resistance and Populist Performance: Examining Kwame Nkrumah’s Construction and Promotion of the African Dream
Discourse &Society, Ahead of Print.
Scenes of precarity: Conditions, dynamics and challenges for the post-pandemic future of cultural labour in Argentina
International Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
Creative industries are often promoted as key for economic, social and cultural development, particularly in countries of the Global South. In Argentina, the impact of the pandemic nurtured cultural workers’ organization and collective action, which brought to public attention the precarious conditions of cultural labor, and brought into question the centrality of individual and private initiatives known as ‘culturepreneurship’ within culture production. This article discusses the issue through an approach to cultural labor in general, and theatre and live music in particular, based on interviews and focus groups with 23 cultural workers in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area. We argue that cultural labor precarity presents a specific set of characteristics that are not only material but also related to its symbolic and subjective character, which public policy makers and cultural workers themselves need to consider in order to improve these conditions in the post-pandemic period.
Creative industries are often promoted as key for economic, social and cultural development, particularly in countries of the Global South. In Argentina, the impact of the pandemic nurtured cultural workers’ organization and collective action, which brought to public attention the precarious conditions of cultural labor, and brought into question the centrality of individual and private initiatives known as ‘culturepreneurship’ within culture production. This article discusses the issue through an approach to cultural labor in general, and theatre and live music in particular, based on interviews and focus groups with 23 cultural workers in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area. We argue that cultural labor precarity presents a specific set of characteristics that are not only material but also related to its symbolic and subjective character, which public policy makers and cultural workers themselves need to consider in order to improve these conditions in the post-pandemic period.
Soft nationalism and China: A case study of nationalism in short videos by US-Chinese rapper MC Jin
International Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
In this article we introduce the concept of soft nationalism through a case-study analysis of short videos by US-born rapper MC Jin (Jin Au-Yeung), who is of Chinese background. Jin's creative output, we argue, with its cross-cultural and grassroots invocations of Chinese identity, ethnicity, tradition, language and belonging, complicates existing theories of nationalism. To address these complications we develop the term ‘soft nationalism’, to describe forms of nationalism that are neither ‘hard’, ‘hot’ and bellicose nor ‘banal’ or ‘everyday’. Like soft power, soft nationalism carries intent but speaks quietly, and is practised everywhere but often found in China, in the context of a recent surge of participatory online nationalism.
In this article we introduce the concept of soft nationalism through a case-study analysis of short videos by US-born rapper MC Jin (Jin Au-Yeung), who is of Chinese background. Jin's creative output, we argue, with its cross-cultural and grassroots invocations of Chinese identity, ethnicity, tradition, language and belonging, complicates existing theories of nationalism. To address these complications we develop the term ‘soft nationalism’, to describe forms of nationalism that are neither ‘hard’, ‘hot’ and bellicose nor ‘banal’ or ‘everyday’. Like soft power, soft nationalism carries intent but speaks quietly, and is practised everywhere but often found in China, in the context of a recent surge of participatory online nationalism.
Teaching Chaucer in Tunisia: An interdisciplinary approach
Abstract
Pedagogies of the premodern in anglophone contexts face many obstacles, like cultural differences, linguistic remoteness, and stereotypical representations. In EFL learning and teaching settings, student motivation, cultural adequation, and historical imagination are also needed. In Tunisia, this was further complicated after the Jasmine Revolution when newly radicalised students of English resented aspects of premodern literature which they considered inaccurate, uninteresting, or inappropriate. In this paper, the author presents a learning and teaching model developed to help post-revolutionary Tunisian learners with diverse backgrounds and orientations better understand and appreciate the works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Combining elements of cognitive studies, comparative literature, and digital codicology, this bricolage was used in graduate seminars at the University of Sousse to study digitised manuscripts and texts in Arabic, Latin, and (Middle) English. Informed by active pedagogy and enhanced by audio-visual aids, activities based on this model effectively addressed challenges, helped achieve learning outcomes, and made Tunisians more at home with Chaucer.
Book review: Tan S and Marissa KL.E (eds), Discourses, Modes, Media and Meaning in an Era of Pandemic: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Approach
Discourse &Communication, Volume 17, Issue 5, Page 685-687, October 2023.