Functional linguistics is an approach to the study of language characterized by taking systematically into account the speaker's and the hearer's side,and the communicative needs of the speaker and of the given language community. Linguistic functionalism spawned in the 1920s to 1930s from Ferdinand de Saussure's systematic structuralist approach to language (1916).
Critical discourse analysis (CDA) uncovers the hidden meanings embedded in texts and conversations. It analyses the way the language used reinforces power relationships,social hierarchies,and ideologies.
Discourse analysis (DA),or discourse studies,is an approach to the analysis of written,spoken,or sign language,including any significant semiotic event.
Kira Hall is Distinguished Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology,as well as director for the Program in Culture,Language,and Social Practice (CLASP),at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Social semiotics is a branch of the field of semiotics which investigates human signifying practices in specific social and cultural circumstances,and which tries to explain meaning-making as a social practice. Semiotics,as originally defined by Ferdinand de Saussure,is "the science of the life of signs in society". Social semiotics expands on Saussure's founding insights by exploring the implications of the fact that the "codes" of language and communication are formed by social processes. The crucial implication here is that meanings and semiotic systems are shaped by relations of power,and that as power shifts in society,our languages and other systems of socially accepted meanings can and do change.
Gunther Rolf Kress MBE was a linguist and semiotician. He is considered one of the leading theorists in critical discourse analysis,social semiotics and multimodality,particularly in relation to their educational implications. Kress has been described as "one of the leading academics of the early 21st century".
Multiliteracy is an approach to literacy theory and pedagogy coined in the mid-1990s by the New London Group. The approach is characterized by two key aspects of literacy –linguistic diversity and multimodal forms of linguistic expressions and representation. It was coined in response to two major changes in the globalized environment. One such change was the growing linguistic and cultural diversity due to increased transnational migration. The second major change was the proliferation of new mediums of communication due to advancement in communication technologies e.g. the internet,multimedia,and digital media. As a scholarly approach,multiliteracy focuses on the new "literacy" that is developing in response to the changes in the way people communicate globally due to technological shifts and the interplay between different cultures and languages.
Interactional linguistics (IL) is an interdisciplinary approach to grammar and interaction in the field of linguistics,that applies the methods of Conversation Analysis to the study of linguistic structures,including syntax,phonetics,morphology,and so on. Interactional linguistics is based on the principle that linguistic structures and uses are formed through interaction and it aims at understanding how languages are shaped through interaction. The approach focuses on temporality,activity implication and embodiment in interaction. Interactional linguistics asks research questions such as "How are linguistic patterns shaped by interaction?" and "How do linguistic patterns themselves shape interaction?".
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax,semantics (meaning),morphology,phonetics,phonology,and pragmatics. Subdisciplines such as biolinguistics and psycholinguistics bridge many of these divisions.
James Robert Martin is a Canadian linguist. He is Professor of Linguistics at The University of Sydney. He is the leading figure in the 'Sydney School' of systemic functional linguistics. Martin is well known for his work on discourse analysis,genre,appraisal,multimodality and educational linguistics.
Norma Catalina Mendoza-Denton is a professor of anthropology at the University of California,Los Angeles. She specializes in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology,including work in sociophonetics,language and identity,ethnography and visual anthropology.
Media linguistics is the linguistic study of language use in the media. It studies the functioning of language in the media sphere,or modern mass communication presented by print,audiovisual,digital,and networked media. Media linguistics investigates the relationship between language use,which is regarded as an interface between social and cognitive communication practice,and public discourse conveyed through media.
Multimodality is the application of multiple literacies within one medium. Multiple literacies or "modes" contribute to an audience's understanding of a composition. Everything from the placement of images to the organization of the content to the method of delivery creates meaning. This is the result of a shift from isolated text being relied on as the primary source of communication,to the image being utilized more frequently in the digital age. Multimodality describes communication practices in terms of the textual,aural,linguistic,spatial,and visual resources used to compose messages.
Lilie Chouliaraki is Chair in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE). Chouliaraki’s main area of research is the mediation of human vulnerability and suffering. Her publications have pioneered an interdisciplinary research field in Media and Communications Ethics,focusing on three areas of research:
Paul Baker is a British professor and linguist at the Department of Linguistics and English Language of Lancaster University,United Kingdom. His research focuses on corpus linguistics,critical discourse analysis,corpus-assisted discourse studies and language and identity. He is known for his research on the language of Polari. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts.
Rosalind Ivanić is a Yugoslav-born British linguist. She is currently an honorary professor at the Department of Linguistics and English Language of Lancaster University,United Kingdom. Her research focuses on applied linguistics with a special focus on literacy,intertextuality,multimodal communication,adult literacy,educational linguistics,critical language awareness,punctuation,and second language writing. Along with Theo van Leeuwen and David Barton,she is considered one of the most prominent researchers on literacy.
Monika Bednarek is a German-born Australian linguist. She is a professor in linguistics at the University of Sydney and director of the Sydney Corpus Lab. She is one of the co-developers of Discursive News Values Analysis (DNVA),which is a framework for analyzing how events are constructed as newsworthy through language and images. Her work ranges across various linguistic sub-disciplines,including corpus linguistics,media linguistics,sociolinguistics,discourse analysis,stylistics,and applied linguistics. She was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2024.
Louise Jane Ravelli is an Australian linguist. She is a professor in the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales,Australia. Her research expertise includes multimodal communication,museum communication,discourse analysis,and systemic functional grammar,using the frameworks of Systemic Functional Linguistics,Social Semiotics,and Multimodal Discourse Analysis.
Kay L. O'Halloran is an Australian-born academic in the field of multimodal discourse analysis. She is Chair Professor and Head of Department of Communication and Media in the School of the Arts at the University of Liverpool and Visiting Distinguished Professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University (2017–2020). She is the founding director of the Multimodal Analysis Laboratory of the Interactive and Digital Media Institute (IDMI) at the National University of Singapore (NUS). She is widely known for her development of systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis (SF-MDA) and its application in the realm of mathematical discourse and multimodal text construction. Her current work involves the development and use of digital tools and techniques for multimodal analysis and mixed methods approaches to big data analytics.
The representation of the Holocaust on social media has been a subject of scholarly inquiry and media attention.
