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Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 21:5 (2022) ► pp.697–720

Temporal agency of social movements

A semio-chronotopic analysis of the Floyd protests

ORCID logo | Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport

The article examines, through the lens of cognitive semiotics, temporal agency and experiences that define the protestors’ identity within the space of the Floyd protests as visualized in AP sequenced news photos. The analysis points to the role of resemiotized chronotopic motifs that bring together the past, present and future times of racial discrimination. In this regard, the paper synthesizes the Bakhtinian chronotope with Multimodal Conceptual Metaphor. Synthesizing Multimodal Metaphors with the chronotope is meant to conceptualize the temporality of the social movement, assigning it agentive identity. That is, chronotopic temporality is deployed in this article as a metaphorical placeholder for movements agency and individuality. Two chronotopes interact within the visualized space of the protests: one is centred in the memories of past apartheid and a desired future, the other conceptualizes a resistant and angry present.

Keywords: Bakhtinian chronotope, MCM, social movements, social semiotics, spatial orientations, temporal agency
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Situating the Floyd protests within the different histories of BLMM
  • 3.Chronotopic agency
  • 4.A multimodal approach to conceptual metaphor: A focus on spatio-temporal orientations
  • 5.Data collection and analysis procedures
  • 6.Analysis
    • 6.1 racism as suffocation: The Air chronotope
    • 6.2 fire is freedom: The Fire chronotope
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 February 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.21049.faw
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