engleski

Yo soy una puta verbal: Attitudinal positioning in Malena Pichot's video blog performance

"Yo soy una puta verbal (…) no tiene ningún sentido depilarme" ("I'm a verbal whore, there's no point in depilating") represents a verbal fragment of a complex performative interaction in the video blogs in the form of a personal diary of the Argentinian vlogger Lalocademierda (Malena Pichot). This study uses the appraisal framework developed by Martin & White (2005) to analyze the attitudinal positioning and the evaluative structures which the vlogger presents while narrating about her everyday life and experiences (with men), drawing at the same time attention to sociocultural and power relations. The Appraisal Theory comes from the Systemic-Functional traditions in linguistics, and it is primarily concerned with creating meanings by emotive positioning, and the construction of dialogic patterns (see Martin & White 2005 ; Feng & O'Halloran 2013 ; Feng & Qi 2014) between the interactive participants – the vlogger and the audience. Nevertheless, although the analysis is primarily focused on the attitudinal positioning, in order to understand the emotive meanings constructed by the vlogger and the evaluative textual patterns, the verbal and audiovisual representation of modes, by all means, needs to be briefly presented. Correspondingly, the data is presented and discussed in two ways. First, since the study approaches the digital narrative as a complex multimodal (inter)action, the analysis is centered on salient modes by which this interaction is constructed, and the meanings that the text is evoking and connoting. Hence, following the multimodal Social Semiotic theory and Multimodal Discourse Analysis (see Kress & van Leeuwen 2001 ; Adami 2009, Page 2010), the multimodal strategies are briefly discussed: verbal resources – oral representations and written fragments in the form of meta-texts – accompanied by the audiovisual resources. Second, using the appraisal framework to analyze the author's attitudinal positioning and emotive meanings – with its subcategories of affect, judgement, and appreciation –, the findings in the study primarily suggest that (i) the author combines verbal and audiovisual modes to express emotive meanings ; (ii) the attitudinal positioning is mainly related to the topic of “being a woman”, i.e. the stereotypes about female representations and roles ; (iii) the elements of humor and irony are expressed in the textual (verbal and audiovisual) constructions of emotive positioning ; (iv) it appears to be a laborious task to delineate the limits between the subcategories of affect, judgement, and appreciation since, to put it briefly, the attitudinal positioning is not manifested exclusively by isolated (sets of) clauses and individual modes – major parts of the textual sequences and narrative elements can imply dominant attitudes and emotions as well. Hence, it is suggested that the multimodal analysis of discourse prosody could combine the appraisal framework and the analysis of a narrative structure while describing the digital audiovisual interaction, the relationship across and between modes, and the emotive positioning of the vlogger. // REFERENCES: Adami, E. (2009). ‘We/YouTube’: exploring sign-making in video- interaction. Visual Communication, 8(4), 379-399. Feng, D., &O'Halloran, K. L. (2013). The multimodal representation of emotion in film: Integrating cognitive and semiotic approaches. Semiotica, 197, 79-100. Feng, D., &Qi, Y. (2014). Emotion prosody and viewer engagement in film narrative: A social semiotic approach. Narrative Inquiry, 24(2), 347-367. Kress, G. R., &Van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Arnold. Martin, J. R., &White, P. R. (2005). The language of evaluation: Appraisal in English. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Page, R. (2010). New Perspectives on Narrative and Multimodality. London and New York: Routledge.

video blog ; multimodal interaction ; appraisal ; emotive meaning

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