Music as Multimodal Discourse: Semiotics, Power and Protest

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We communicate multimodally. Everyday communication involves not only words, but gestures, images, videos, sounds and of course, music. Music has traditionally been viewed as a separate object that we can isolate, discuss, perform and listen to. However, much of musics power lies in its use as multimodal communication. It is not just lyrics which lend songs their meaning, but images and musical sounds as well. The music industry, governments and artists have always relied on posters, films and album covers to enhance musics semiotic meaning. Music as Multimodal Discourse: Semiotics, Power and Protest considers musical sound as multimodal communication, examining the interacting meaning potential of sonic aspects such as rhythm, instrumentation, pitch, tonality, melody and their interrelationships with text, image and other modes, drawing upon, and extending the conceptual territory of social semiotics. In so doing, this book brings together research from scholars to explore questions around how we communicate through musical discourse, and in the discourses of music. Methods in this collection are drawn from Critical Discourse Analysis, Social Semiotics and Music Studies to expose both the function and semiotic potential of the various modes used in songs and other musical texts. These analyses reveal how each mode works in various contexts from around the world often articulating counter-hegemonic and subversive discourses of identity and belonging.

Reviews

This volume offers a useful collection of studies ... Individual case studies are skilfully drawn and very thought-provoking. * IASPM@Journal *
Music As Multimodal Discourse takes the reader through a fascinating journey in the multimodal dimension of music as discourse, through its material and ideological purport and through its incredible power of integration with other models of discourse. It is a reading that addresses academic boundaries that have no more reason to exist. * CADAAD *
A very thought-provoking collection of essays. * Punctum: International Journal of Semiotics *
Music as Multimodal Discourse is an essential volume for scholars seeking to understand and analyse the role of music in ways that uncover its critical potential for social change. All too often music is analysed as a merely aesthetic, emotive, or abstractly cultural phenomenon. This valuable collection understands music as a primary motivating element in political and historical struggles for power, and as forms of discourse that are often opaque precisely because they are so elemental and ubiquitous. -- Philip Graham, Professor of Music, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

Author Bio

Lyndon C. S. Way is Associate Professor of media and communications at Izmir University of Economics, Turkey Simon McKerrell is Senior Lecturer & Head of Music at Newcastle University, UK