专著推荐 | Multimodal Communication and Soft Skills Development

Multimodality is the notion which stands behind the most fertile investigations in communication and language studies nowadays. Multimodal depiction of the surrounding world helps the child to better conceptualise, objectify, and reify abstract notions. Even before children learn to talk, they activate their soft skills, the so-called life/human competences or social skills, and they employ multimodal communication pertaining to gestures and sounds in order to interact. Therefore, when knowledge of the brain and body intertwines with social and emotional intelligence, it fosters human dialogue and it enhances our communication. Offering great insight into the evolution of theoretical and analytical approaches to multimodal meaning construction and soft skills development, this volume is an indispensable resource for (under)graduate students and researchers in applied linguistics, semiotics, media and communication studies, ELT Methodology, and psychology.

The volume is divided into two parts that shed new light on the diverse aspects of the main concepts under investigation, namely multimodality and soft skills as they pervade different fields of research such as linguistics, literary studies, cultural and media studies, but also sociology, management and organisational studies. Whereas formerly published works focus upon isolated domains, our volume seeks to reveal the intricacy, even the convolution of both areas in a range of genres. Therefore, we share with Scheerens et al. (2020) and Seizov & Wildfeuer (2020) the attempt at proving the manageability of the soft skills in such a way that, owing to the multimodal means and techniques suggested by our contributors, they become teachable.

In her contribution entitled La modification de la valeur d’usage des termes géographiques, Gabriela DUDA provides an original outline of the linguistic path followed by several geographic terms on their way to acquiring axiological evaluative values, either positive connotations, having mitigating, constructive, and persuasive effects, or negative connotations, leading to derogatory overtones.

A complex and insightful framework that highlights the interplay of cognitive linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis, and multimodality within Positioning Theory is proposed by Carmen SANCHO GUINDA in order to analyse samples of multimodal political narratives and scientific dissemination documents.

Drawing on Theories of humour, particularly on racial humour theory with its recent Benign Violation Theory, on the one hand, and critical humour studies embedding “cultural racism” views, on the other hand, Arleen IONESCU and Zengjing LI analyse a corpus of memes in the social media as both visual and verbal forms of cultural violence directed at the Chinese people at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Remembering Trauma in Multimodal Ways is achieved by Ling CHEN who investigates four different ways in which the Nanjing (Nanking) massacre was represented: survivors’ testimonies gathered in diaries, non-fiction documents, literature, and films. Special attention is given to Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking, which is a devastating chronicle of people’s sufferance and trauma, and the wartime diaries of Minnie Vautrin and Tsen Shui-fang, the latter being the only known Chinese who kept a daily account of what she saw during the atrocity. Iris Chang’s, Minnie Vautrin’s, and Tsen Shui-fang’s accounts represent three distinctive perspectives that tried to preserve the memorisation of the massacre: from that of an indirect witness who resisted the public tendency to ignore this event, that of an American missionary who sheltered over 10,000 women and children, and that of a Chinese woman who witnessed the massive atrocities committed against her fellow compatriots. The chapter also explores the effects of The Flowers of War written by Geling Yan and its movie adaptation directed by Yimou Zhang in their artistic representations of the event.

Rongrong QIAN renders forgetting, distortion, and imagination as essential multimodal means of memory manipulation purposefully employed by the protagonist of John Banville’s Shroud with a view to evading his traumatic past experiences.

Inspired by Nørgaard’s multimodal stylistic approach, Zengjing LI explores the meaning negotiation potential of Nicholas Royle’s Quilt considering its wording, typographical devices, layout, as well as the book cover design characteristics of the first and the second editions.

Throughout her research paper, Adina Oana NICOLAE provides enlightening insight regarding the interplay between the verbal cues and the pictorial dimensions of business magazine covers that exhibit interesting intersemiotic patterns potentiated by the metaphorical load of integrated elements. The author’s compiled corpus amounts to forty-five sample covers belonging to The Economist and to Harvard Business Review. The empirical investigation highlights the intricate configurations of the various modes that are co-deployed with a view to sending a strong message to the audience.

Diana PARASCHIV and Cătălin STĂNESCU’s contribution brings to the fore those particular semiotic resources that are employed in the poster of the UNTOLD festival as “a means of cultural appropriation and association”, thus outlining certain features of Romanian identity.

Following a similar thread of argumentation, Sara MARINESCU proposes a complex methodological framework that would reveal The Power of Photography during the Vietnam War era. The author proves the potential of the pictorial metaphor to frame aspects of reality in such a way as to intensify the viewer’s emotions that will enrich his/her perception of the Other’s experience.

Diana RÎNCIOG’s study offers an overview of the main marketing techniques employed by luxury brands to sell an image and thus, persuade their customers of the imaginary value of the products they may have been dreaming of for a long time.

Drawing on sociolinguistic, psychologic, and philosophical perspectives, Mihaela DUMA explores the multiple values of the mask as the available means the wearer could benefit from in order to hide from the Others and protect oneself from any pernicious influence, and yet to be able to honestly reveal one’s own identity, one’s own essential self.

Soft skills development represents the focal area of scrutiny in the second part of the volume.

From the outset, Anca DOBRINESCU’s research provides insightful suggestions on how to determine our students to delve into the study of Modernist literature having painting as a starting point. Critical thinking skills are thus enhanced once the students are asked to observe the paintings, to reflect on their features, to make associations with their personal experiences, and later on to compare and contrast them to those exhibited by Virginia Woolf’s or D. H. Lawrence’s characters.

Mind Maps represent another valuable and convenient instrument when it comes to developing students’ creative and prognostic thinking that helps them provide solutions to problems, debate over moral dilemmas, or construct and produce a variety of discourse types endowed with cultural views and codes. In addition, Ana Maria TOLOMEI’s study sheds new light on Mind Maps as exbodied techniques that, apart from their didactic value enhanced during cultural studies classes, create synergies among students who share similar – or apparently dissimilar – views.

Teodora RĂDUCANU’s chapter entitled Emotional and social intelligence competencies in private schools abroad discusses the problem of the holistic education that should be the foundation of every educational system willing to offer its children something more than academic preparation. Nowadays, when more and more parents are looking for the best schools and study programs for their children, when league tables and ranking systems are often the most important selection criteria, and when hunting grades and certificates became an international sport, it is essential to remember that children’s education means more than grades, diplomas or competitions. Teodora Răducanu proposes optimal solutions for all the students (and parents) involved in this world where borders are diluted, where the exposure to multicultural environments has become part of everyone’s reality, in a world where a single day can expose us to a whole universe of emotions and situations.

本书目录

Cover

Title

About the editors

About the book

Contents

Introduction: Multimodal Development of Your SELF

I. Multimodal Discourse Analysis

La modification de la valeur d’usage des termes géographiques (Gabriela Duda)

Multimodal Narratives in Political Discourse and Science Dissemination: The ‘subtlety game’ (Carmen Sancho Guinda)

The Limits of Humour: On COVID-19 Tendentious Jokes (Arleen Ionescu and Zengjing Li)

Remembering Trauma in Multimodal Ways: The Rape of Nanking (Ling Chen)