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Inducing Comprehension and Emotions Through Discourse Multimodality: The Use of Language, Image and Sound

Received: 29 December 2021    Accepted: 8 February 2022    Published: 25 February 2022
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Abstract

This article aims to highlight the multimodal features which underlie the architecture of meaning, emphasizing that the use of images and sounds in the construction of the text is a powerful tool to help the reader to make sense of any text genre. It is a well-known fact that communication is a complex process due to the fact that it comprises many steps. Since any text is just a proposal for the construction of meaning, the recipient’s role is very active, continually pairing their long-term memory with the coded message to cognitively reconstruct the meaning accordingly. Therefore, we claim that since the spoken language has a strong neural basis, which dates back to the first months of life, and the written language is intrinsically related to the visual system, the use of figures of speech (images) and figures of sound (syntactic stylistic devices) trigger both the right and left hemispheres of the brain and cause them to work in harmony, inducing comprehension and emotion. In this sense, the classic style, based on functional and cognitive principles of information structure, is highly recommended for a more generic readership of any kind of text genre, not only literary but also non-literary. In fact, some authors have recently argued that it seems to be easier for readers to make sense of texts when they evoke images and the feeling of sound, a phenomenon called phonesthetics, in which the aesthetic features of individual sounds and sound clusters of words and even structures reverberate in our minds, enhancing the understanding of an idea.

Published in Communication and Linguistics Studies (Volume 8, Issue 1)
DOI 10.11648/j.cls.20220801.16
Page(s) 25-30
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Multimodality, Cognition, Comprehension, Emotion, Images (Figure of Speech), Sounds (Figure of Sound)

References
[1] Perelman, Chaïm. (1979). The New Rhetoric and the Humanities: Essays on Rhetoric and Its Applications. Trans. William Kluback. London: D. Reidel.
[2] COULSON, Seana. (2001) Semantic Leaps: Frame-shifting and conceptual Blending in Meaning Construction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[3] OAKLEY, Todd. (2020) Rhetorical minds: meditations on the cognitive science of persuasion, New York: Berghahn Books.
[4] Dictionary, O. (2020). Oxford English and Spanish Dictionary. Available at https://www.lexico.com/definition/communication.
[5] Bergen, B. K. (2012). Louder than words: The new science of how the mind makes meaning. Basic Books (AZ).
[6] Iain McGilchrist, (2012) The master and his emissary: the divided brain and the making of the Western world (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010).
[7] Iain McGilchrist (2021). The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, London: Perspectiva Press.
[8] Mlodinow, L. (2016). The upright thinkers: The human journey from living in trees to understanding the cosmos. Vintage.
[9] Steven, P. (2014). The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the Twenty-First Century.
[10] Bombaugh, C. C. (1890). Gleanings from the Harvest-Fields of Literature. A Melange of Excerpta, Curious, Humorous, and Instructive. Collated by CC Bombaugh. Revised and Enlarged. London; Philadelphia printed.
[11] Thomas, F. N., & Turner, M. (2011). One. Principles of Classic Style. In Clear and Simple as the Truth (pp. 5-106). Princeton University Press.
[12] Lachman, G. (2017). Lost knowledge of the imagination. Floris Books.
[13] Asma, S. T. (2021). The evolution of imagination. University of Chicago Press.
[14] Pederson, T., & Mukherjee, S. (2011). The Emperor of All Maladies A Biography of Cancer. Science, 332 (6028), 423-423.
[15] Friesen, L. (2012). God, Theology, and Cognitive Modules: A General Theory of Human Thought.
[16] Forsyth, M. (2013). The elements of eloquence: How to turn the perfect English phrase. Icon Books Ltd.
Cite This Article
  • APA Style

    Antonio Suarez Abreu, Sarah Barbieri Vieira. (2022). Inducing Comprehension and Emotions Through Discourse Multimodality: The Use of Language, Image and Sound. Communication and Linguistics Studies, 8(1), 25-30. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.cls.20220801.16

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    ACS Style

    Antonio Suarez Abreu; Sarah Barbieri Vieira. Inducing Comprehension and Emotions Through Discourse Multimodality: The Use of Language, Image and Sound. Commun. Linguist. Stud. 2022, 8(1), 25-30. doi: 10.11648/j.cls.20220801.16

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    AMA Style

    Antonio Suarez Abreu, Sarah Barbieri Vieira. Inducing Comprehension and Emotions Through Discourse Multimodality: The Use of Language, Image and Sound. Commun Linguist Stud. 2022;8(1):25-30. doi: 10.11648/j.cls.20220801.16

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  • @article{10.11648/j.cls.20220801.16,
      author = {Antonio Suarez Abreu and Sarah Barbieri Vieira},
      title = {Inducing Comprehension and Emotions Through Discourse Multimodality: The Use of Language, Image and Sound},
      journal = {Communication and Linguistics Studies},
      volume = {8},
      number = {1},
      pages = {25-30},
      doi = {10.11648/j.cls.20220801.16},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.cls.20220801.16},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.cls.20220801.16},
      abstract = {This article aims to highlight the multimodal features which underlie the architecture of meaning, emphasizing that the use of images and sounds in the construction of the text is a powerful tool to help the reader to make sense of any text genre. It is a well-known fact that communication is a complex process due to the fact that it comprises many steps. Since any text is just a proposal for the construction of meaning, the recipient’s role is very active, continually pairing their long-term memory with the coded message to cognitively reconstruct the meaning accordingly. Therefore, we claim that since the spoken language has a strong neural basis, which dates back to the first months of life, and the written language is intrinsically related to the visual system, the use of figures of speech (images) and figures of sound (syntactic stylistic devices) trigger both the right and left hemispheres of the brain and cause them to work in harmony, inducing comprehension and emotion. In this sense, the classic style, based on functional and cognitive principles of information structure, is highly recommended for a more generic readership of any kind of text genre, not only literary but also non-literary. In fact, some authors have recently argued that it seems to be easier for readers to make sense of texts when they evoke images and the feeling of sound, a phenomenon called phonesthetics, in which the aesthetic features of individual sounds and sound clusters of words and even structures reverberate in our minds, enhancing the understanding of an idea.},
     year = {2022}
    }
    

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    AB  - This article aims to highlight the multimodal features which underlie the architecture of meaning, emphasizing that the use of images and sounds in the construction of the text is a powerful tool to help the reader to make sense of any text genre. It is a well-known fact that communication is a complex process due to the fact that it comprises many steps. Since any text is just a proposal for the construction of meaning, the recipient’s role is very active, continually pairing their long-term memory with the coded message to cognitively reconstruct the meaning accordingly. Therefore, we claim that since the spoken language has a strong neural basis, which dates back to the first months of life, and the written language is intrinsically related to the visual system, the use of figures of speech (images) and figures of sound (syntactic stylistic devices) trigger both the right and left hemispheres of the brain and cause them to work in harmony, inducing comprehension and emotion. In this sense, the classic style, based on functional and cognitive principles of information structure, is highly recommended for a more generic readership of any kind of text genre, not only literary but also non-literary. In fact, some authors have recently argued that it seems to be easier for readers to make sense of texts when they evoke images and the feeling of sound, a phenomenon called phonesthetics, in which the aesthetic features of individual sounds and sound clusters of words and even structures reverberate in our minds, enhancing the understanding of an idea.
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Author Information
  • Department of Linguistics, S?o Paulo State University, Araraquara, Brazil

  • Department of English, Estácio de Sá University, Ribeir?o Preto, Brazil

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