Lecture Series „Meaning-Making in Political and Cultural Discourse”
10.30-11.30: Lecture 1. Discourse as environment for meaning making.
This lecture discusses the interactive nature of discourse as environment for meaning making. Discourse is interpreted in the interactive-dynamic view as the interaction of communicants in a particular semiotic environment, aimed at the joint construction of meanings. According to the theory of social constructivism, our way of communication not only reflects the surrounding world, identities, and social relations, but also plays an active role in their construction and development.
11.45-12.45: Lecture 2. How meanings are made in discourse: the Samurai way.
This lecture addresses the main characteristics of meaning-making in discourse. It is well known that the Samurai way is the code of principles governing the behavior of a samurai, which metaphorically refers in my lecture to the system of regulations obtained as a result of theoretical reasoning and empirical analysis.
In my presentation, I tackle the cognitive, functional, and semiotic issues underpinned by the theories of joint attention, embodied cognition, and performativity. A case study of Trump’s anti-Biden political campaign commercials enables to demonstrate the global strategies of meaning making in multisemiotic environments.
13.30-14.30: Lecture 3. Film discourse analysis: some theoretical and empirical issues.
The theoretical aspect provides the cognitive-semiotic view to meaning making with the special focus on the interplay of semiotic resources in film. These resources are blended to construct meanings and the configurations of semiotic elements determine contextual properties of filmic meanings. The empirical aspect addresses the film analysis of a vivid example of pop culture, the American epic romance and disaster film “Titanic”.
14.30: Final Discussion