The representation of coronavirus: 'Don't be afraid but pay attention'

Coronavirus...coronavirus...'Don't be afraid but pay attention'

14 June 2020

In this blog post, I would like to write about coronavirus and language: how it is talked about in the media? As I do this, I am hoping to contribute to an interest in ‘coronavirus and language’ (see below). I would like to find out if there might be, if any, a positive representation of coronavirus other than its negative (and rather grim) representation in the news.

I am also inspired by auto-ethnography (self-reflection through writing) and I would like to talk a bit about how I coped with the lockdown. I will do so in the second part of this blog post. But first, I will tell you more about what I have learnt so far about language (particularly metaphors) and coronavirus, and how the use of metaphors creates a specific representation of coronavirus. Ready?

I would have liked to travel this summer, day dreaming…and I could bizarrely hear the sounds of a helicopter, as if I am in it, leaving the ground, for some exciting good views!

Coronavirus and language

 Many blog posts, tweets and articles have explored how language, mostly used by politicians,  frame our attitudes about the coronavirus. When we analyse language, there are many aspects we can look at for example, the presuppositions and assumptions made in a text, the nominalisations used (for example, how a particular phenomenon is named and described) and the metaphors used (see for example, Unger, Wodak & KhosraviNik 2016: 283 and Wodak & Krzyzanowski 2008). The metaphors used to talk about coronavirus has been a focus of interest in what is written about coronavirus and language. So, what are metaphors? What do they do? And what does the use of metaphors tell us about the representation of coronavirus?

Metaphors and coronavirus

You might be already familiar with the term ‘metaphor’ (for example, saying ‘my mother is the moon'). But if you do not know the term, here is its definition by an expert on metaphors, Elena Semino. She defines metaphors as follows:

‘By metaphor, I mean the phenomenon whereby we talk and, potentially, think about something in terms of something else’ (Elena Semino (2008: 1).

In Metaphor in Discourse, Elena Semino shows us how metaphors can frame the way we think about actions, processes, or phenomena; metaphors also have richness of meanings (see for example, Semino 2008: 4-10). For example, when we say 'life as a journey', we are likely to communicate many meanings about life, for example, life as movement, as an adventure, or possibly going through unexpected events or new things.

I like this article by Paul Elie, named ‘against virus as metaphor’ published in the New Yorker (I knew about this article on Twitter: @elenasemino). This article is interesting because it explains why some/many of us did not take coronavirus seriously at first. The article tells us two things. First, even before the outbreak of covid 19, ‘the virus’ was already popular as a metaphor, for example, when we say, this video went ‘viral’ or when we say this computer had ‘a virus’. Second, it is this popular use of ‘the virus’ as a metaphor -the article suggests- that could have made coronavirus seem less serious than what it is.

There is more about metaphors and coronavirus, in this blog post by Brigitte Nerlich named ‘metaphors in the time of coronavirus’. (She is on Twitter: @BNerlich). The blog post talks us through the many metaphors that have been used to talk about coronavirus, such as ‘flattening the curve’ (also used as a persuasive device as in ‘stay at home, flatten the curve’), ‘the domino effect’ (showing how easy it is to spread the virus) and the ‘spike protein’ as ‘weapon’ in reference to the spikes on the virus that allow it to stick to human cells. This blog post also explains how coronavirus is described as a natural disaster or as a plague killer. Another variation of this metaphor is describing coronavirus as a tsunami, as @elenasemino pointed out in one of her tweets. To elaborate on the tsunami metaphor, here is an example from an article on the BBC news website about coronavirus in South Africa:

'But so far, and against most predictions, South Africa's hospitals remain quiet, the anticipated tsunami of infections that many experts here have been waiting for has yet to materialise'.

Coronavirus is also described as ‘an enemy’ in which nations are described in a ‘state of war’. You might have already noticed that politicians used phrases such as ‘the fight’, ‘the struggle’ and ‘the battle’ in their speeches on the coronavirus. From one perspective, you might argue that the war metaphor is used as a persuasive strategy to show the seriousness of the situation and to persuade people to follow the social distancing rules.

The war metaphor, however, has been criticised a lot. In fact, if there is anything positive about the coronavirus pandemic, it could be said that it has contributed to an increasing interest and debate about metaphor, language use and the coronavirus. To illustrate, a google search on ‘coronavirus and the war metaphor’ shows about ‘21 million results’, which leads to many many pages with links to content (articles/videos) about the war metaphor and the coronavirus.

As I mentioned above, many of these articles are against the use of the war metaphor. Since this feeds into my inquiry of the representation of coronavirus, I will briefly sum up the main arguments against the war metaphor, before moving on to the second part of my blog post about coping with the lockdown (yay, finally!).

The war metaphor

There are at least two arguments against the use of a war metaphor in talking about covid 19. First, a war metaphor could give wrong assumptions about the world, which needs unity and cooperation rather than discourse on war, as this article argues, for example. Second, a war metaphor could put the listener/viewer in a state of frenzy and panic, as my former lecturer Veronika Koller argues in this article.

In my view, the above-mentioned metaphors of a war, of a natural disaster make an official representation of coronavirus. It is described here as a looming threat (‘a war’ or an  ‘enemy’), as something dynamic (‘a moving curve’) and as something unavoidable (‘a tsunami’, ‘a natural disaster’ etc.).

I passed through days since the corona outbreak when stepping out of the door (to buy things from the shop nearby) gave me negative feelings and was something uncomfortable. I always looked round me, as if the coronavirus (the ‘invisible enemy’) would suddenly appear and track me down, as I went to the shop and came back. Luckily, these feelings were intermittent. It was listening to songs and music that helped me get over my fears. I will tell you more below about my fascination with a song in Spanish called 'coronavirus', in this following section.

Coping with the corona quarantine…🎧

My main coping strategy in corona lockdown was listening to songs. I would like to say more about this but first I will tell you about a course/module I attended at Lancaster University. It was about understanding media. I learnt from the lectures of Julia Gillen that when we study media texts, we can examine not only the texts themselves (for example, the lyrics) but also what we do with them, for example, the practices that surround listening to songs.

In corona lockdown, I think I was mainly listening to songs to overcome boredom and negative thoughts. Like books or paintings, some songs inspire me, for example, give me energy to go through the 'tasks of the day' or explore new things. But since in the past, I mainly listened to songs in English and Arabic, I thought it would be a good idea to listen to songs of languages I don't speak. I even thought after a while that life could be more welcoming and tolerant, if we adopt this as a practice, since songs and their video-editions carry with them cultural symbols, new tastes etc.

I started listening to Indian songs; I am still exploring them but so far, I like this one by Neha Kakkar. I then moved to explore songs in Spanish. In this (most amazing) time of self-reflection, I stumbled  upon a song on YouTube called 'coronavirus'. When I first listened to it, it sounded like a dance song, and I thought it is brave. It is not something usual, I think, that we have songs about 'disease', and with such an upbeat rhythm? I became more curious and checked the lyrics' meanings in Google. 

As I will explain below, this song was inspiring as it was hopeful and humorous. It made me more confident; as a language scholar, I could see other representations of coronavirus other than the dominant images of war and tsunami.

CORONAVIRUS, CORONAVIRUS, LÁVENSE LAS MANOS, HÁGANLO SEGUIDO ‘wash your hands. Do it often’

The 'coronavirus' song -I am using as an example of another representation of coronavirus-  has at least three versions on YouTube: one is by the singer Andy Zvala, another is by Mister Cumbia (these are grown-ups) and a third version is by a child singer, Ramiro Martínez. He is an accordion player and has a YouTube channel of his own, with about 6 thousand subscribers (featured below).

I hope that you, like me, enjoy the song (here is the link to it! Surprise!).

As you listen to the song, you will notice that it has an upbeat music and a call for interactivity. For example, the description of Andy Zavala's performance reads: 'Andy Zavala wants to teach how the virus is fought by singing’ and at 00.38 of the song, as the singer mentions his name and we read it as well like a banner running on the screen, we see an image of him on stage. It is as if he is now in front of us, performing the song live (see below).

Besides the upbeat music and interactivity (through the repeated mention of the singers' name: Andy Zavala and Mister Cumbia, humour is apparent, I think, in the two songs. Andy Zavala’s song for example, has a funny picture of a man wearing a ‘Norton antivirus CD’ to his nose, as a face mask, drawing on the double meaning (pun) of a virus: 1-computer virus and 2-coronavirus. There is also a graphic image of people wearing masks in a collective action, perhaps in a self-mocking manner, as if from now on, this will be our 'new' dress code.

In the song by Mister Cumbia, coronavirus is personified as two faces that keep moving in their place throughout the song (which perhaps shares with the metaphor of ‘flattening the curve’, the idea of movement). The two faces of the coronavirus have crossed eyebrows, suggesting an evil attention, which is also communicated by the ‘fake’ smile on their face (see the figure below). This cartoonist style of personifying the virus, however, brings it closer to children's stories, as if this could be a part of a (monster) story book for children, giving a light-hearted representation of the corona virus.

This light-hearted approach is also evident in the song by Ramiro Martínez. He 'seriously' acts the role of a medical professional,  as can be seen from his gestures and dress code, for example, he gestures with his index finger to the viewer, and applies a disinfectant in front of the camera, which takes me to my last and my final section (I promise!) about the lyrics of the song.

The lyrics and their structure

The lyrics follow a problem-solution structure. First, they establish coronavirus as an ‘alarm’ that has ‘scared’ the world, something that at first might be similar to the representation of coronavirus in the news. Yet, having established coronavirus as an alarm, the lyrics offer advice/solution: ‘wash your hands frequently, wear a mask and keep a meter distance from others’. It is up to the listener to infer the following message: follow this advice and things will be fine or as the description in Andy Zavala’s song says: ‘Don’t be afraid but pay attention’.

In my corona quarantine, I listened to this song quite a bit and I found it inspirational and empowering, through its upbeat music, use of humour and message of hope. Plus, it was good to see another representation of coronavirus, other than the images of coronavirus in the news, as a looming threat, a weapon; and a tsunami that is approaching.

References

Elie, Paul. 2020. (Against) virus as metaphor. The New Yorker. March 19:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/against-the-coronavirus-as-metaphor Accessed May 27, 2020.

Nerlich, Brigitte. 2020. Metaphors in the time of coronavirus. Making Science Public. March 17. https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingsciencepublic/2020/03/17/metaphors-in-the-time-of-coronavirus/ Accessed May 27, 2020.

Tisdall, Simon. 2020. Lay off those war metaphors, world leaders. You could be the next casualty. The Guardian. March 21. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/21/donald-trump-boris-johnson-coronavirus Accessed May 27, 2020.

Semino, Elena. 2008. Metaphor in discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Serhan, Yasmeen. 2020. The case against waging ‘war’ on the coronavirus. The Atlantic. March 31.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/03/war-metaphor-coronavirus/609049/ Accessed May 27, 2020.

Unger, Johann, Wodak, Ruth, & KhosraviNik, Majid. 2016. Critical discourse studies and social media data. In David Silverman (Ed.), Qualitative research (4th ed.). London: SAGE, pp. 277-293.

Wodak, Ruth, & Krzyzanowski, Michal. 2008. Qualitative discourse analysis in the social Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan

Links to the songs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lap1eCx3Wvw&t=2s (Andy Zavala)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hW4DF6FWtk (Mister Cumbia)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21oUje8pUcY (Ramiro Martínez)

Happy International Women's Day...The mic is on...

Here is a recent post I wrote on Facebook on International Women's Day:

Apparently, the mic is still on from the last Facebook post I wrote and the kind response to it from my family, friends, colleagues and lecturers. This morning, I found myself writing this in pencil on a recycled, blank sheet of paper. Here is my imaginary speech on International Women’s Day:

“Today is a day like no other. International Women’s Day. It is gloomy and cloudy, but in my heart there is hope, sun shining and a bright blue moon. Dear strong women out there, I would like to congratulate you for your strength, for surviving and facing subtle or clear patterns and patches of silencing, pigeonholing and exclusion.This patchwork (raising my voice) is not artwork (pause). I believe it is only through our unity, believing in ourselves and shunning the stereotypes about us women that we can take on this ongoing challenge, for example, stereotypes about East and West, and stereotypes about differences of skin colour and religion (putting on a faint smile as I move my glasses towards my face).Whether you are now in Japan, Egypt, US, Indonesia or the UK, let us all unite against forms of exclusion and make sure that our voices are heard and listened to. And dear men out there (looking at something in a vacuum) you will only be included and human till you challenge your prejudices and do something about it.”
#themicison  #daydreaming  #IWomensDay #يوم_المرأة_العالمي

My reflections on Lancaster University Corpus Linguistics Summer School

This year I participated in the Corpus Linguistics Summer School on Discourse, Language and Society at Lancaster University which took place from 25-28 of June. The school was inspiring on many levels. It was a great opportunity to learn about Corpus Linguistics from top scholars in the field. I also gained insights into many domains such as health communication and historical linguistics. Here I am, in the bright summer days of Great Britain, reflecting on my participation in the school.

Corpus Linguistics methods and tools

In the school, we explored the meaning of Corpus Linguistics (CL), its methods and strengths. So is CL a method or an approach or both?! In his lecture, Andrew Hardie described corpus linguistics as a “toolkit for research which gives us the power to search, process and analyse a vast and complex array of language data”. Through CL tools, we can explore the frequency of a particular word and its collocations. So why are collocations worth exploring? As Paul Baker explained in his lecture, when we see words together (e.g. “illegal immigrant”), we would be primed to associate one word (immigrant) with the other (illegal).

The school included lab sessions in which we we used three websites/software for corpus analysis: CQP (Corpus Query Processor) Web, #LancsBox and W-Matrix. CQP web is a good starting point to explore corpus linguistics. In Paul Baker’s lecture, for example, we searched for the word “refugees” in the British National Corpus. One interesting collocate of refugees was the word “flood” i.e. “flood of refugees” in which refugees are represented in a negative way as a burden or a danger. In other lectures, we used LancsBox to create graphs of collocates and collocational networks. As for W-Matrix, it allowed us to gain insights into keyness (words which are more frequent in one corpus in reference to another corpus) and to identify the main semantic fields (topics) in a corpus.

I have always thought of statistics as dull or boring but Vaclav Brezina gave us very interesting lectures on statistics in which we steadily learnt about key concepts such as mean, median, the null hypothesis and the different ways to look at statistical significance. His engaging approach to statistics motivates me to read his forthcoming book Statistics in Corpus Linguistics: A Practical Guide.

Multi-disciplinarity

As much as learning about CL methods and tools, the school allowed me to explore new domains such as forensic linguistics! Claire Hardaker gave us a very interesting lecture about forensic linguistics, its scope, types and the application of CL to forensic linguistics. I find it inspiring that she keeps a blog on forensic linguistics and organizes a writing retreat for students and scholars involved in work in forensic linguistics.

Elena Semino gave us a great plenary lecture on corpus linguistics and health communication. She presented the methodology and findings of two recent studies she undertook with a multidisciplinary team on communication about chronic (neuropathic) pain. As she pointed out, chronic pain can be a difficult task to talk about, which can have negative implications for patients and health care providers. The two studies drew on innovative methods. In one study, for example, patients were given cards (from which they choose one/s) to relate to as they described their feelings of pain. While Elena Semino is already a superstar in stylistics and metaphor theory, she has turned her attention to health communication. I look forward to reading her forthcoming book Metaphor, Cancer and the End of Life: A corpus-Based Study.

Other domains that I explored in the school are lexicography and historical linguistics. In Jonathan Culpeper’s lectures, I learnt about the Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare’s Language Project; he explained the myths that surrounded Shakespeare’s language and how the development of CL resources and software made it possible to analyse Shakespeare’s language, also in relation to the general language of the period. For more about Culpeper’s journey with corpus linguistics and the Shakespeare’s Language Project, you may like to listen to this comprehensive interview with him available on YouTube!

Tony McEnery gave us another fascinating lecture about the representation of the marginalised groups in 17^th century England. One particular example intrigued me as it relates to coffee making! He showed us how there is a vast literature/discourse around the “Mohammedan berry”, which refers to coffee beans that were introduced from Istanbul to England in the 17^th century. In this discourse, Ottomans were represented as dangerous or wanting to undermine the social fabric of the society at the time. In my notes of McEnery’s lecture, I found myself drawing stars on his remark on the 'longevity' of discourses. Discourses (for example, on Muslims and blacks) can be produced in a particular era and can lie in the background for many years or eras before they are called upon again at a certain moment in time.

Overall, the school was truly a festival of ideas as one participant in the school described it. It was also a call for a critical approach to language analysis or as Tony McEnery put it in the closing plenary of the school, be critical as you approach language and do it with humility.

Writing about Faith and Language Practices in Digital Spaces

Besides my recently published article on ‘the representation of Islam and Muslims in the YouTube videos of the American Muslim televangelist Baba Ali’, I am super excited that I contributed a chapter to the book  Faith and Language Practice in Digital Space which offers a timely contribution to the nexus of faith, language practices and electronic technology. The book is published by Multi-Lingual Matters and broadly speaking includes a variety of topics that draw on sociolinguistics and language practice, multi-modality and Critical Discourse Studies. Since not many books have explored the interaction between faith, language practice and online technologies, I would like to dedicate this blogpost to discuss the main themes in the book, including my chapter on Muslim televangelism in the West.  

The book comprises four main parts. Part I: Faith, Language and Social Media includes two chapters that explore the interaction between religion and social media, for example, 'how transnational faith communities employ Facebook as an important online resource for developing virtual transnational networks that support language ideologies'.

Part 2 Faith, Language and Transnational Online Practices investigates how 'language practice adapts itself to online contexts with transnational audiences' (p. 11). For example, Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 explore the language and cultural practices of the Yoruba people, an ethnic group in Nigeria that has its own language and spiritual traditions. In addition, Chapter 5 examines the Yiddish virtual community on wikipedia.

Part 3 is entitled Faith, Language and Online Televangelism. It turns attention to televangelism, which has gained huge popularity over the past few decades. In Chapter 7, Omoniyi adopts a sociolinguistic approach to evangelism. Drawing on World Englishes, he shows how 'non-native varieties of English (e.g. of Nigerian English) can 'replace or at least mirror the global reach of standard varieties' (p. 13).
In Chapter 8 'Televangelists as religious celebrities: the changing face of religious discourse', I investigate the online performances of two popular televangelists (i.e. Baba Ali and Hamza Yusuf) and analyse their self-representation strategies. Drawing on Critical Discourse Studies, I  show how televangelists construct their online identities, using a variety of discursive and multimodal strategies, for example, the use of formal/informal language, camera shots, and frame size. I show that televangelism represents an example of ‘religio-tainment’ that can be contextualised in the broader genre of info-tainment.

Part 4 Faith, Language and Online Ritual investigates the changes that occur to rituals as they are performed online. In Chapter 9, Rajeshawi, explores online Satsang and online puja. In the language of Sanskrit, Satsang refers to gatherings aimed at meditation and spiritual awakenings, whereas puja refers to devotional worship in Hinduism. In her chapter, she marks the contrast between the flexibility of online practice as opposed to the fixity of offline ones (p. 14). Another chapter in this section is by Andrey Rosowsky on ‘online ‘Baya’a’ Practices within a Worldwide Sufi Order’. Rosowsky reveals that although pledging is traditionally an oral ritual, written text appears 'embodied, visual and shaped to support the ritual'.

I am really delighted that in 2017, my chapter on Muslim televangelists’ online performances came to light among a variety of interesting topics on many religious traditions and employing many approaches and conceptual framework. As such, it offers an important contribution to the domain of online technologies, language practices and faith. 

Linguistics books translated into Arabic: Here we talk about Metaphors in Discourse and Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis!

Has it ever happened to you that you visited a bookshop and you almost got lost there, flipping through books and thinking of book titles?

Well, this has happened to me and I am eager as well to read about your experiences?!

The weather was gloomy in Lancaster over the past week and I enjoy remembering this.

It was sunny and bright! Next to me was my father who was similing; walking with his stick which created a rhythm as we went by. We were heading towards Cairo Opera House where the bookshop of the Supreme Cultural Council lies.

Here I am moving around- flipping through translated books of literature, sociology and history translated into Arabic from many different languages: Greek, Japanese, English and German.

In the linguistics section, there were two books that I was super excited to see and get: Metaphors in Discourse (2008) by Elena Semino and Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (2009) edited by Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer. Both Elena Semino and Ruth Wodak are professors in the Department of Linguistics at Lancaster University, where I am currently studying. (P. S. Ruth Wodak is my PhD supervisor!). It was impressive to see books for them translated into Arabic in Egypt!  

Which book/author would you like me to start with?

Metaphors in Discourse (2008) is one of other five books for Elena Semino. (You are invited to read and explore her books, articles and presentations on her web-page on academia.edu). The book represents an important area of interest for the author among other areas of interest (here are linguistics terms coming!) such as cognitive stylistics; corpus stylistics and mind style in fiction.

Professor Elena Semino signing her book at Lancaster University.

The book offers a comprehensive view on “metaphor” which means -and I am quoting her- “the phenomenon whereby we talk and, potentially, think about something in terms of something else”  (page 1). An example is when we say that “life is a journey” in which life is conceptually represented as a journey.

As you may guess from the title, Metaphors in Discourse, the book argues that metaphors is “a pervasive linguistic phenomenon” and is  “central to many different types of communication, from informal interaction through political speeches to scientific” language.

In fact, the book is divided into six chapters, each appears to be focused on a particular domain; for example, language used in literature, science, politics and blog writing.  

Like the English version, the book is written in a clear language that can appeal to a lay reader; it is translated by Emad Abdel Latif and Khaled Tawfiq, who themselves are well-established Egyptian scholars of linguistics.

The second book, I am inviting you to read is, Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (2009, 2nd edition), which is an essential read for anyone interested in Critical Discourse Analysis.

The Arabic version of Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis translated by Housam Ahmed Farag and Azza Shebl Mohamed

So, what is Critical Discourse Analysis? 

CDA is an approach to language that assumes that discourse- language in use- is a social practice. A striking example is the use of the word “nigger” which exemplified an exclusionary practice against blacks in the past, as Ruth Wodak informed us in another important book she co-authored with Martin Reisigl, i.e. Discourse and Discrimination (2001). It is these exclusionary practices that CDA is critical of; for example you may like to explore Ruth Wodak's most recent book The Politics of Fear.
 
Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis has eight chapters. Chapter 1 by Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer discusses the development of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and the assumptions and principles underlying it. The book has contributions from many authors, including Norman Fairclough, Teun A. van Dijk, Ruth Wodak, Michael Meyer, Martin Reisigl, Gerlinde Mautner, Siegfried Jäger and Florentine Maier.

One thing I like about the two books, Metaphors in Discourse and Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, is that they can help us better understand language use, as a complex phenomenon that has many dimensions and aspects to it (for example, see chapter 4 by Martin Reisigl and Ruth Wodak on the Discourse Historical Approach).

The books have gained other personal meanings. In my small library at Lancaster, I sometimes revisit them. In a magical link, they take me back to the hums and buzzes of the streets of Cairo, to the Cairo Opera House, re-experiencing this awesome feeling that Cairo Opera House is a meeting place for so many languages and topics!

It is also a great pleasure that the two books are signed by two great scholars who are already celebrities in their fields! Visiting a bookshop can indeed become a remarkable experience!

Linguistics on the run

It has been a while since I last wrote on blogspot. I have enjoyed blogging for many years and I never lost hope of writing again.

Let me tell you what this blog is about and what it aims to achieve.

I graduated from the Department of English Language at Cairo University and I am now at Lancaster to undertake my PhD in the Department of Linguistics at Lancaster University, in England, a great place to be if you are interested in linguistics and literature.

Well, my PhD journey is coming to its destination soon (with an awarded PhD! I hope). But for a couple of weeks or even months, the idea of this blog has been haunting me. I would like to create a blog about linguistics, not aimed at linguists, who are very wonderful people by the way ;) but to readers who may not have read about sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis and translation studies; some of the interesting disciplines I have enjoyed so far (trust me!).

So, through this blog, I will share with you some of the interesting things (events, books, topics) I experienced and my reflections on them.

So what this blog post is about?

In this first post, I will talk about “multi-modality” and will celebrate with you my new publication, on the topic!

Multi-modality is an approach “that understands communication and representation to be more than about language”. This means that in analysing interactions and communication, we take into account other elements in addition to verbal language such as image, colour and sound.

Last year, I participated in a conference on multi-modality in Bremen, in Germany.

And a book- that has developed out of the conference- is recently published, edited by Dr Janina Wildfeuer at Bremen University who herself has many publications on multi-modal analysis including a monograph on film discourse interpretation.

The name of the book that is recently published is Building Bridges for Multi-modal Research published by Peter Lang. As the name may suggest, the book provides an understanding of the different perspectives on multi-modality and how to combine the different approaches to multi-modal analysis.

The title of the chapter I wrote in the book is "Multi-modality in Perspective: Towards a Synergy of the Discourse Historical Approach and the framework of Visual Grammar".

I would like to explain what these terms refer to.

The Discourse Historical Approach is an interdisciplinary approach that suggests that “context” is important to language analysis. It proposes a multi-layered concept of "context" that includes: not only the immediate language (for example, the linguistic aspects used to describe particular groups/individuals) but also the situational context (for example, where the speech event takes place and whether it is a formal or an informal event). It also includes examining the social and historical contexts surrounding the language used (for example, the historical and social background of the intended audience).

The theory of Visual Grammar looks into the communicative functions of images. Like verbal language, images can have communicative meanings. An image, for example, may describe an action in what is called by Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996) a “narrative visual structure”. Or it may describe attributes of a person or object (take a map as an example) in what is named as “analytical structures” (Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996: 45-87).

In the chapter I wrote, I propose that a synergy of the Discourse Historical Approach and the theory of Visual Grammar will benefit from the methodological rigour of the two approaches and enable us to analyse both verbal and visual language. I apply the two approaches to televangelism (i.e. preaching religion via the Internet/television) which has become popular over the past few decades.

One reason I am super excited about the book and my contribution to it is that it features writings by well-known scholars in multi-modal research such as Diane Mavers in the UK and Hartmut Stöckl in Austria.

When I received the book in the post, the first thing I did was to take a photo of the book with the lovely postcard I received from the editor. It features a painting by Margaret Sara Carpenter called The Sisters, displayed in Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The photo is taken in my room in Kirkham before moving to my ever cutest city- Lancaster!

Freiburg

This week I spent some time looking at my photo albums. During my PhD studies at Lancaster University, I visited many cities to present my research on Muslim televangelism. One city I enjoyed visiting is Freiburg in West Germany. I gave a presentation on 'the discursive construction of Muslim identities in televangelists' sermons'.  Here I reflect on some of the places I visited.

My journey to Freiburg started from Manchester airport where I flew to Stuttgart. I travelled by car to Freiburg and was impressed by the mountainous landscape and the pine trees, tall and grand. As I explored the city, I liked its distinct architecture that combined its old features with a modern character, for example, its cobbled streets and graffiti. 

In Freiburg, we visited the Black Forest, climbed up a tower and enjoyed a panoramic view of the landscape.

After participating in the school on sociolinguistics and presenting my research, I travelled to Stuttgart, the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden Wurttemberg. Maybe Stuttgart is already famous for being an industrial hub where companies such as Porsche and Mercedes-Benz are headquartered. Yet it also has many great museums that feature magnificent work of art. 

I visited Kunstmuseum, the museum of modern art that was relatively new as it was opened in 2005. The paintings of Otto Dix really struck me for their unique style. Dix depicted the suffering of war and was critical of the Nazis.  

Another museum I stopped at in Stuttgart was the museum of musical instruments. There, I recollected the contributions of African and Islamic music culture to contemporary musical tradition.





From Stuttgart, I travelled to another city, Ludwigsburg. There, I wandered through a park and at a distance, I saw a fairytale like castle called Favorite. 

Ludwigsburg is also home to Ludwigsburg Residential Palace, which is known for its Baroque style that can be seen in its architecture, furniture and wall paintings. It is a complex that has many parks and stunning museums such as the fashion museum and the ceramics museum.

Visiting the fashion museum was a unique experience to me. The light is dim and there are black walls throughout to preserve clothes.

In Ludwigsburg Palace, I was very lucky to enter a hall of classical sculpture that depicts Greek mythology.  I fell in love with the work of Christian Friedrich Wilhelm Beyer who worked in an early Neo-classical style. The sculpture of Apollo and Daphne was very memorable. I liked it so much that I regarded it as a gift for my journey to Freiburg and my participation in the (post-)doctoral school on 'Englishes in a multilingual world: New dynamics of variation, contact and change'.

Portugal 3: My birthday and the coriander!

First it was mint, then watercress… then came the coriander. The mint lost its glamour when I moved it to a new pot. It became shorter with smaller leaves. In the corridor, I contemplated ‘watercress’, it had flat leaves that seemed to spread well on the ground. The coriander was slim and yellowish, but it happened that most of the time, I stopped to water it, it was looking towards the sun.

Compared to the watercress, the coriander was not breaking spaces; it seemed to be rather on its own, yearning for the sun. Worried about the coriander, I found myself watering it more, touching its leaves.  

Of the few things I have planted in England- mint, lilies, cactus- I said to myself- it is the coriander that I have enjoyed the most.

I was not sure if such a ‘revelation’ had anything to do with me going up that hill. I was looking a lot to the weeds, small bushes and inspecting the grass. Was I looking for ‘a revelation’, something like a lost coin, a plant ‘that is the most beautiful of all’, an extraordinary precious stone? I still don’t know what exactly I was doing there. I was listening to that song.     

It was about two lovers who separated and became friends. It was dark and bitter- let us say 70% cocoa. It was in my playlist; and when I listened to it on the way to Bom Jesus, I could not let it go. Each time, I would listen to a part of another song, get the mobile out of my pocket and select the song again. But after a while, I submitted, I selected; ‘play current song only’.

As I reached the top, where the church was, one thing I was curious to know if I was the only person who was here alone; all around, there were friends and a few couples. I got relief in seeing a man-his back to me- taking photographs of the church. He would soon be joined by another man. I said I would celebrate coming here alone. I left my backpack on a bench; and took a photo of it, the caption in my mind read ‘at the highest point of Braga’. I discovered a garden next to the church. In front of me a woman holding a broom, and at a distance, there was a fountain that was not working. I was still listening to the same song.

On my way back, it was the Beatles song (things changed, you know!)- this song where a man is surrounded by a crowd, I woud imagine a clown, blindfold, in a circle.

Had I said before that ‘I am weak in front of the tambourine’? As I walked, ‘two-foot small’ would rhyme as ‘fruit’ (please, do not ask how); I remembered plastic fruit that we used to have; women in belly dancing suits were tapping their feet-with bangles- on the floor; making the sound of the tambourine. I am sure, if I just carried on something would show up eventually. ‘Excuse me, excuse me, I would like to go to Giza Square? Yeah the Pyramids, making a triangle with my hands’. I crossed the road.       

When I came back from the hostel, the secretary knocked on my door and handed me the flowers and an envelope. I felt like a man handed in a baby for the first time. I told her ‘I don’t think I need a vase’. But she brought one. With a bashful smile, I stood beside the window; my eyes fell upon the fence of the nursery opposite the hostel. ‘I would like to talk to my mother now’. I remembered I cannot use my British number. I dreamt if I can draw a path that would take me directly to the ramp in our house- just to have a cup of tea with her, tell her that I got flowers for my birthday, and come back to work on my presentation.

This was the first international conference I would present at. It is (and stay away please) C.A.D.A.D. I had to do well in it- build a path to the pyramids in our house in Portugal. I contemplated the flowers.

To skip forward, the conference would eventually end, and I would leave the flowers behind (and was there a way that I could carry them back or make them live longer?).

One day later, I was lost in thoughts about my presentation, attending presentations by others, asking myself if I would do well.  In my queer thoughts, I was standing in a room; tangled up in wires, with people holding miniature robots, all around. Like a drawing for me by my niece that I carried from London to Lancaster to Portugal, the flowers were literally protecting me, as images, faces and spaces alternated.   

Portugal 2: On the way to Bom Jesus

 

Had it not been for that child, nothing would have been unusual: a father and a child having their lunch on a bench in MacDonald's on one sunny day in Portugal. The father took the child and went inside, soon the potato chips would be scattered; I would see pigeons and hear the monotonous sound of their beaks hitting the table. I took a bite of the sandwich, looked to the young ladies wearing the same style of blouse.

I must have moved the falling strips of my hair behind my ears, covered my sandwich and sank in the bench. The boy, would come now and find his potato chips gone. I was still contemplating the shoulderless blouse of the young lady opposite me. Looking towards the sun, I  was free of my clothes; I became an X-Ray skeleton, shooting the birds. In a book, one bird was fluttering and turned into a giant creature with wings. I put my hands on my cheek. Why would bats appear in daylight? I turned my eyes towards the shade. The man and the boy appeared, passed indifferently by the table, and left. I put the sandwich and the bottle of water in my bag;  I would move along, I said.

I was climbing the hill. Before coming here, I knew the hostel was close to university and I would go on foot. A year and seven months, I became an explorer (not the Internet one!), a human with shoe skates, going from Greaves to Alexandra Park, from Scotforth to town, from Dr Michael Owen Street to Minho University, from Minho University to Bom Jesus on foot.

In my room, my eyes would fall upon my shoes and a small pot of mint on the window sill; I got the shoes from Clarks.  I would remember my mother, recycling papers, putting seeds of watermelon in our garden, teaching me over the phone how to grow the sprout of mint she gave me in a small pot in England. Does not she deserve a bit of shoe skating, move, move your muscles, I would tap my hips, when it got difficult in that slope towards university.

I put on my shoe skates, tightened them and started smoothly from the beginning of the road; I took a picture of a house covered with tiles; the other house had a checked fence with a fountain and a bare child.

My right knee hurts a couple of days before my cycle. Towards the middle, I was tired, checking the ground as if looking for a lost treasure. I saw paintings for Jesus, the suffering of black men; candles that are not yet lit behind a metal frame.

Three months later at Lancaster, I would pay the money to the young lady in return for a small card that I would show the driver each time I got on, an Id that I have to show to cross from border to border, from Scotforth to town, from town to university, in the same destiny with young men and women sitting on chairs, or clinging to yellow stands with small red buttons. Gone were the days of shoe skating. In the last time I was in Cairo, I proudly told my niece that I went to university on foot three days a week. What would I tell her now?   

Climbing those zigzag stairs, I saw them, their backs towards the Church, their faces towards town, like gods contemplating the world from above, overlooking the creamy church, I took my camera out, I stood still trying to comprehend the scenery… confused where to put the cover, thinking from where and how can I find the cadre, and press the button…

Portugal 1: My name is Red!

As for my umbrella, I got it from One Pound World in Manchester; I was on my way to Portland Street for the VISA interview when it started to rain heavily. The first thing I thought about was taking the bus… but when I saw One Pound World an advertisement moved like a banner in my head: ‘With a pound or more you can get an umbrella for life, for life, and enjoy walking… enjoy walking in the rain..’ I went inside, had a look around and did not see umbrellas. I asked the shop assistant; he pointed to a stall: red and black umbrellas were lying in a cardboard box; I quickly grabbed the red one, paid the money (a pound and half by the way!) and walked –diligently- figuring out my way to Portland street! I finished my VISA errand and in a matter of two days, this red crab became my favorite Hunny Bunny; the new umbrella!

But it broke in one windy day at Lancaster; it was exactly when I was past the bus stop; it turned inside out and while pulling the umbrella up towards the sky, its junctures were torn leaving one of its steel metal bare without a cloth; I inadvertently tried to pull the cloth to cover it but it obviously needed to be stitched. In the next day, my old umbrella- that my father gave me- broke too; I threw it in the bin at university and for seconds afterwards I thought if my father would be cross if he saw me throwing his umbrella. I obviously needed a new one.

In New Look, I looked anxiously at the umbrellas on the stall: brown with some yellow dots. I was willing to pay eight pounds (with some thinking really :)) but the red colour of my umbrella kept flagging in my mind:  it is red, clear red like the Egyptian cotton t-shirt I bought from downtown Cairo and like the coral pendent I had from Khan El Khalili when my mother was with me. ‘I will think about it’, I told my friend.

In the morning, I put my accessories in my bag and remembered to put red thread and a needle; I was in John Lennon’s airport four hours ahead; and what good circumstances like these to fix my great fantastic red project?! I put the thread in the needle’s eye, asking myself if I have ever seen a human stitching something in an airport. The café and the policewoman were the last thing I saw before my eyes would be blocked by waves of red color; if I know how the stitches are done in the old junctures, I can fix the torn ones… In the swimming pool in Cairo, going from line to  line, I moved through one light hazy blue colour, everything was smooth till I got to that plucked ceramic towards the middle, a dark spot, a deep whole, a whirling centre of a hurricane, I took my head out; the policewoman was looking at me.

When I reached Portugal, it crossed my mind that fixing the umbrella was a sign that things would be fine. It was 9.30 in the evening; the bus would come after an hour and half and when I would get to Braga, it would be almost twelve. This is ‘45 Dr. Michael Owen’, the taxi driver said as he parked the car; he gestured that he would wait for me till I got there; I passed the small gate, talked to someone over the phone, and went back to the main entrance, ‘all is fine, thank you’ I waved to him.

A Portuguese man showed me around the house. The lights of the stairs turned out automatically like those towards the gate at the  the house of my brother in New Cairo. The two-level bed reminded me of the room in a camp I went to in Sinai. In bed, I stared at the chair. I moved my hand slowly to switch off the lamp as if I am having difficulty reaching it: ‘earth is really small and boring, and they keep saying oh I have been to this country or that country when it is really a matter of tiny small cities’. That was my confession- to a secret audience- at night, but in the morning, things seemed to change…