Sabrina Mazzali-Lurati

Here is the author! Hyperlinks as constitutive rules of hypertextual communication

Abstract In this paper, we examine the importance of hyperlinks in revealing the presence of the hypertext author and his decisive role in defining and controlling the dialogue with the user/reader through the hypertext. This is essential in order to adequately describe all the factors involved in hypertextual communication and how this communication takes place. In hypertexts and hypermedia, hyperlinks on the one hand define the possible directions of hypertextual communication and, on the other hand, their strategy of manifestation shapes the users process of interpretation. Because of these two important ‘powers’ hyperlinks have, and on the basis of John Searles distinction between constitutive and regulative rules, hyperlinks can be defined as constitutive rules of hypertextual communication, set by the author, needing to be activated by the reader, and determining different utterances in the interaction happening during the navigation between the author and the user/reader. In the paper, after having described the semiotic-communicative structure of hyperlinks and the process of interpretation they require, the character of constitutive rules of hyperlinks will be illustrated by analyzing different dialogues generated by different hyperlinks in two particular kinds of hypermedial applications: hypertextual transpositions of classic literary texts and hyperfiction.

The argumentative and rhetorical function of multimodal metonymy

Abstract The aim of this article is to contribute to the theoretical development of multimodal metonymy and the argumentative and rhetorical role that the trope can fulfil in multimodal advertising campaigns. A model for the analysis of multimodal tropes in page-based advertising messages is developed by drawing insights from different disciplines. This model involves the identification of the elementary and layout components of the message, the description of its multimodal structure (in terms of the visual structure and the contribution of the verbal component), the reconstruction of its meaning operation, and the reconstruction of its enthymematic structure. In particular, the meaning operation is reconstructed by the employment of Conceptual Integration Theory, which we have slightly revised in order to better account for metonymical mappings. The enthymematic structure is reconstructed following the Argumentum Model of Topics, a model of argument schemes that enables one to make explicit the contextual and the logical dimensions of arguments. Based on the tenets of the two frameworks, we claim that multimodal metonymy condenses and gives access to a complex chain of connections, which mirrors the argumentation the audience is invited to infer. This argumentation is based on causal schemes of reasoning. This claim results in the in-depth analysis of both a billboard belonging to an anti-AIDS campaign and a social campaign by Greenpeace against the use of environmental-damaging paper for toy packages by Mattel.

Multimodality and argumentation in online travel reviews: An action-centered analysis

In this paper we reconstruct the hierarchy of discourse acts that reviewers build in multimodal online reviews for tourist attractions. We aim at showing (1) how reviewers employ different semiotic modes to fulfil the communicative action of tourist recommendation, and (2) the pragmatic function of photographs in the hierarchy of discourse acts. By adopting the framework of Congruity Theory (e.g., Rigotti, 2005; Rocci, 2005), we analyze a sample of positive and negative multimodal reviews of the Great Cathedral and Mosque in Cordoba (Spain) published by tourists on TripAdvisor. We show that the multimodal elements of the reviews fulfil different pragmatic functions within the overall communicative action of providing advice on the tourist site.

Unravelling the mechanisms of multimodal multiplication

Given the always greater prominence it gains in our usual communicative flows, multimodality is a topic of major interest in current semiotic and communication research. In his most recent book, Multimodality and genre: A foundation for the systematic analysis of multimodal documents, Bateman deals with it in great detail, with a main focus on the analysis of multimodal documents in a perspective that strictly relates multimodality to the notion of genre. In developing this issue, the author provides, on the one hand, a rich and well-informed overview on the different approaches to multimodality elaborated up to now in different fields of research and, on the other hand, a theoretical exploration of both multimodality and genre. This way through approaches and definitions is fundamentally guided by the practical concern of providing “a framework that can begin to unravel the mechanisms of multimodal multiplication” that characterize multimodal documents ( p. 2) “on a sound empirical and scientific basis” ( p. 13). This is the declared main task and goal of the book. Such a framework constitutes, in Bateman’s view, a fundamental step to be taken in order to get out of the shortcomings of current widespread ways of approaching multimodality. In fact, according to the author, research on this topic often suffers from the bias of pre-structuring the results of the analysis “with preconceptions imported from our experience with other kinds of semiotic artefacts” ( p. 11). Bateman observes that, although many researchers in different fields have been studying multimodality (trying to describe it, define it, and to identify the roles and contributions of the different semiotic modes), no sufficiently rigorous and systematic method for the analysis of multimodal documents has yet been elaborated. The different approaches pursue their different aims and, therefore, focus on different (and only some) aspects of the multimodal text ( p. 24) or adopt a perspective of analysis that does not stem from a pure o bservation