Philip Graham

Drawing from ethnographic, empirical, and historical / cultural perspectives, we examine the extent to which visual aspects of music contribute to the communication that takes place between performers and their listeners. First, we introduce a framework for understanding how media and genres shape aural and visual experiences of music. Second, we present case studies of two performances, and describe the relation between visual and aural aspects of performance. Third, we report empirical evidence that visual aspects of performance reliably influence perceptions of musical structure and affective interpretations of music. Finally, we trace new and old media trajectories of aural and visual dimensions of music, and highlight how our conceptions, perceptions and appreciation of music are intertwined with technological innovation and media deployment strategies.

ABSTRACTThis paper analyses influential approaches to CDA using an ethical lens that employs a synthesis underpinned by Kenneth Burke’s theoretical perspectives on language as action. It argues that CDA is an unavoidably moralistic pursuit with explicit aims of beneficially transforming social and political systems to make them more equal and democratic. The paper briefly addresses well aired criticisms of CDA based on its moralistic core and conclude that they miss the point by having made a Scientistic assessment of a Dramatistic pursuit. I have analysed pieces by Theo van Leeuwen and Ruth Wodak, Norman Fairclough, Ruth Wodak, Teun van Dijk, Jay Lemke, and Isabela and Norman Fairclough.

ABSTRACTI compare M.A.K. Halliday’s metafunctional system with Jay Lemke’s for the purposes of doing Critical Discourse Analysis. The differences I foreground turn specifically on notions of context and the distinction that Kenneth Burke makes between scientistic and dramatistic approaches to the analysis of meaning. I use a corpus of political and journalistic texts on ‘austerity’ discourses, and two examples from creative arts research projects, to demonstrate differences in the contextual potentials of the two systems that have implications for critical analysis. The analysis highlights differences in what Burke describes as analytic range and circumference, and differences in directionality between the two systems. Halliday’s metafunctions provide a gateway into deeper and more detailed analysis of language, directing analysis into aspects of the text below the level of the clause. Lemke’s is an action focused, two-way semiotic interface between cultural groups and the meanings they make, whether by means of language alone or by multimodal means, and demands that analysis begin with culture.

This paper theorises and exemplifies the place of audience labour in the propagation of Discourse and discourses. Audience labour is simply the work of people engaged in mediation processes as they gather themselves into groups defined by specific media events (sport, music, news, movies and so on). It compares the environments and practices of the mass media era and those of the current era to show that the most economically valuable work in media is done by audiences, and that that work is becoming more direct in its orientation and effects, even as it gets cheaper for advertisers and more immersive for audience members. A social media view of audience labour shows up the intensely intimate nature of personal commodification: feelings, attitudes, opinions, outrages, general states of mind and being are all grist for the digital economy mill. Outrage systems are especially profitable. They provide grounds for what I call ‘discourse industrial sectors’, or, those groups of people making a living and sometimes a fortune fighting on one side or another of the so-called culture wars. I argue for a conception of rhetorical purpose as a guide for analysing current media environments that depend on social media.