Image, Writing and Layout
July 1st, 2010
Melani Nekić: Image, Writing and Layout: The Multimodal Analysis of Tourism Website
With subjects ranging from pieces of furniture to children’s drawings and museum exhibitions, the study of meaning-making activities as realised in diverse socio-cultural contexts and across text types has emerged as a cutting-edge and as yet open-ended topic. What many of these studies have in common is that they have been approached from a multimodal perspective.The aims of this lecture are, therefore, twofold. First, students will be introduced to the multimodal perspective by considering such questions as: What are the benefits of multimodal research? Which theories have served as a starting point for multimodal analyses? Which tools can be applied to the analysis of multimodal texts? Second, for illustrative purposes, the relevant theories, concepts and tools will be applied to the analysis of a tourism website. In what ways do meanings unfold when one navigates the themes commonly used to promote tourism – themes such as sports activities and aspects of cultural and natural heritage? How far do notions of culture tie into the analysis of tourism websites? How can we analytically proceed to investigate tourism websites? Students will thus get an idea of how multiple modes such as image, text and layout interact to construe tourist meanings.
Melani Nekić is a doctoral candidate at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) in Giessen, Germany. Her research interests revolve around functional linguistics, social semiotics and tourism studies. She holds a BA in English, French and Media and Communication Studies from the University of Mannheim, Germany, and an MA in Communication and Language Studies from the University of East Anglia, England. Currently, she is researching the relationship between tourism, cultural heritage and environmental management at the Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Croatia.