Multimodal Corpora And Understanding Intersections Between Language And Other Semiotic Systems

By Author: Alex Lee
Total Articles: 365
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Anthony Baldry and Paul Thibault report progress towards developing and analysing multimodal corpora and understanding intersections between language and other semiotic systems. They are testing whether Halliday's metafunctional theory and Gregory's phasal theory are adequate to describe multimodal meaning-making by developing a concordancer that is meaning-and function-oriented rather than form-oriented. Analysis of three television car advertisements shows different systems at work. Transitivity frames for gaze distinguish, for instance, Gazer as Agent or Affected and Circumstance as Location or Environment. Further analysis shows how transitivity relates to visual collocates. This paper convincingly argues for a systemic theory of multimodality, but is realistic in recognizing the enormity of the task ahead. Lee Jeans

Through a comparative corpus study of purposes for using size adjectives, Serge Sharoff proposes an innovative model of lexical semantics which is functional (based on meaning in context); computational in its ability to be used, for example, in machine translation; ...
... wide, covering the most frequent size adjectives; and multilingual, representing comparisons across English, German, and Russian. Motoko Hari compares Halliday's 24 pain expressions with Japanese translations, showing that all but three can be translated using 'itai'. Further investigation using a small spoken corpus and a larger written corpus reveals how Japanese does construe pain as Things, Qualities, and Processes, according to whose pain is indexed. This paper beautifully uncovers how experience is construed differently in two grammars. Similar contrastive insights emerge from Pattama Patpong's corpus-based study of the conjunction in Thai. Using a corpus of Thai folk tales, this paper shows the primary conjunction types and their frequencies, focusing on ko, which is used to mark extension 'also', reason 'because' and conditional 'then' in initial and non-initial position.

Donna Miller's chapter describes her analysis of appraisal in a corpus of 33 Alma Mater donation requests using WordSmith Tools. She takes us through her journey, which starts from searches on 'gift', its participant roles, and appraisal. This leads to further productive searches. There follows close textual analysis, which illustrates much that concordance analysis cannot reveal. Martin Kaltenbacher also focuses on appraisal analysis using WordSmith Tools. He moves from manual analysis to frequency counts using his 'virtual frequency measure'. This productively leads to a discussion of differences among his Austrian, American, and Scottish tourism web sites that goes beyond predictable stereotypes. The clear, replicable methodology and availability of other national web sites invite further research. Calvin Klein Jeans

The informed discussion of theoretical issues, clear explanation of methodologies, and detailed descriptions all, enhanced by skilful editing, highlight the potential and limitations of corpus analysis for SFL. Indeed, Halliday concludes by celebrating the 'appliable' nature of linguistics demonstrated: 'As the scope and accuracy of the description increases, the study of discourse becomes more effective for its tasks' (p. 299). System and Corpus represents a significant milestone on this trajectory.