The Material Dynamics of a London-French Blog: A Multimodal Reading of Migrant Habitus

Through a fine-grained reading of a London-French blog, this article aims to shed light on the lived experience of the French community in London. The ethnosemiotic conceptual framework brings together ethnographic and semiotic schools of thought, focusing in particular on Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and Gunther Kress’s multimodal social semiotic analytical model. Habitus is broken down into its material manifestations of habitat, habit and habituation, all displayed in the blog and revealing of the blogger’s identity and positioning within the migration setting. As all modes are considered to be of equal semiotic potential, equivalent emphasis is placed on the multiple modes of meaning-making present in the blog, such as layout, colour, typography and language. By examining the dynamic relationships between blogger and audience, subjectivity and objectivity, on-line and on-land habitus, and intermodal dynamics themselves, through the prism of multimodality, hidden facets of the blogger’s cultural identity and sense of community belonging within the diasporic context begin to materialise.

Securing the Anthropocene? International Policy Experiments in Digital Hacktivism: A Case Study of Jakarta

This article analyses security discourses that are beginning to self-consciously take on board the shift towards the Anthropocene. Firstly, it sets out the developing episteme of the Anthropocene, highlighting the limits of instrumentalist cause-and-effect approaches to security, increasingly becoming displaced by discursive framings of securing as a process, generated through new forms of mediation and agency, capable of grasping inter-relations in a fluid context. This approach is the methodology of hacking: creatively composing and repurposing already existing forms of agency. It elaborates on hacking as a set of experimental practices and imaginaries of securing the Anthropocene, using as a case study the field of digital policy activism with the focus on community empowerment through social-technical assemblages being developed and applied in ‘the City of the Anthropocene’: Jakarta, Indonesia. The article concludes that policy interventions today cannot readily be grasped in modernist frameworks of ‘problem solving’ but should be seen more in terms of evolving and adaptive ‘life hacks’.

Moments of Collusion? Close readings of affective, hidden moments within feminist research

This paper addresses affective ‘moments of collusion’ present in feminist research relationships, and contextualises these seemingly personal encounters within a wider systematic framework of the early career researcher and the increasingly neoliberal climate of academia. Focusing on the temporal transition from doctoral research to postdoctorate research positions immediately post-PhD, this paper questions the concept of collusion within (immersive) fieldwork, and examines the delicate and complex question of who is colluding with whom, and for what purpose at different times within the early career academic journey. Specifically, this paper focuses on how the increasing pressures of the neoliberal university play out on our emotions and bodies during fieldwork, an area which still requires attention within the growing critiques of the affects of neo-liberalism in Higher Education. Using personal case studies as springboard for a far wider and important discussion, this paper situates such methodological dilemmas within a broader temporal framework of the increasingly precarious nature of early career academics, where ‘moments of collusion’ may be the only way to keep your head above water.

The Visual Representation of a Systematic Metaphor in a UK Media Text

Much has been written on the organizational power of metaphor in discourse, eg on metaphor ‘chains’ and ‘clusters’ of linguistic metaphor in discourse (Koller 2003, Cameron & Stelma 2004, Semino 2008) and the role of extended and systematic metaphor in organizing long stretches of language, even whole texts (Cameron et al 2009, Cameron & Maslen 2010, Deignan et al 2013, Semino et al 2013). However, at times, this work belies the intricacies of how a single metaphoric idea can impact on a text. The focus of this paper is a UK media article derived from a HM Treasury press release on alleviating poverty. The language of the article draws heavily on orientational (spatial) metaphors, particularly metaphors of movement around GOOD IS UP. Although GOOD IS UP can be considered a single metaphoric idea, the picture the reader builds up as they move line by line through this text is complex and multifaceted. I take the idea of “building up a picture” literally in order to investigate the schema of motion relating to GOOD IS UP. To do this, fifteen informants (Masters students at a London university), tutored in Cognitive Metaphor Theory, were asked to read the article and underline words and expressions they felt related to GOOD IS UP. The text was then read back to the informant with emphasis given to the words they had underlined, while they drew a pictorial representation of the article based on the meanings of these words, integrating their drawings into a single picture as they went along. I present examples of the drawings the informants produced. I propose that using Metaphor-led Discourse Analysis to produce visual material in this way offers useful insights into how metaphor contributes to meaning making at text level. It shows how a metaphoric idea, such as GOOD IS UP, provides the text producer with a rich and versatile meaning-making resource for constructing text; and gives a ‘mind-map’ of how certain aspects of a media text are decoded by the text receiver. It also offers a partial representation of the elusive, intermediate ‘deverbalized’ stage of translation (Lederer 1987), where the sense of the source text is held in the mind before it is transferred to the target language. References Cameron, L., R. Maslen, Z. Todd, J. Maule, P. Stratton & N. Stanley. 2009. ‘The discourse dynamic approach to metaphor and metaphor-led analysis’. Metaphor and Symbol, 24(2), 63-89. Cameron, L. & R. Maslen (eds). 2010. Metaphor Analysis: Research Practice in Applied Linguistics, Social Sciences and Humanities. London: Equinox. Cameron, L. & J. Stelma. 2004. ‘Metaphor Clusters in Discourse’. Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1(2), 107-136. Deignan, A., J. Littlemore & E. Semino. 2013. Figurative Language, Genre and Register. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Koller, V. 2003. ‘Metaphor Clusters, Metaphor Chains: Analyzing the Multifunctionality of Metaphor in Text’. metaphorik.de, 5, 115-134. Lederer, M. 1987. ‘La théorie interprétative de la traduction’ in Retour à La Traduction. Le Francais dans Le Monde. Semino, E. 2008. Metaphor in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Semino, E., A. Deignan & J. Littlemore. 2013. ‘Metaphor, Genre, and Recontextualization’. Metaphor and Symbol. 28(1), 41-59.

Marginalised Mothers: Exploring Working Class Experiences

Successive moral panics have cast poor or socially excluded mothers - associated with social problems as diverse as crime, underachievement, unemployment and mental illness - as bad mothers. Their mothering practices are held up as the antithesis of good parenting and are associated with poor outcomes for children. Marginalised Mothers provides a detailed and much-needed insight into the lived experience of mothers who are frequently the focus of public concern and intervention, yet all too often have their voices and experiences overlooked. The book explores how they make sense of their lives with their children and families, position themselves within a context of inequality and vulnerability, and resist, subvert and survive material and social marginalisation. This controversial text uses qualitative data from a selection of working class mothers to highlight the opportunities and choices they face and to expose the middle class assumptions that ground much contemporary family policy. It will be of interest to students and researchers in sociology, social work and social policy, as well as social workers and policymakers.