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Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 22:1 (2023) ► pp.107–128

Multimodality as civic participation

The case of Thailand’s rap against dictatorship

ORCID logo | University of Kurdistan Hewlêr
ORCID logo | University of Kurdistan Hewlêr
In October 2018, a collaboration between young rap artists in Thailand’s Indy rap scene, Rap Against Dictatorship (RAD), launched a video criticizing the ruling Junta that went viral within days of publication. The Junta soon after released its own video as a response to RAD. The production and publication of both videos are what Scollon (2001) calls social actions mediated by a distinct cultural toolkit. This study analyzed how modes such as music, text, color, camera angle, gestures, voice, image and iconicity emerged in both videos to realize scalar differences in civic participation. The Junta’s video represents a high sociolinguistic scale, whereas RAD realizes a lower scale. In a time of political unrest in Thailand, sociolinguistic scale and the semiotic resources that people employ to realize scales are a lens to analyze how different stakeholders address various perspectives of the political situation and appeal to different levels of civic participation.
Keywords: Thailand, civic participation, multimodal discourse analysis, mediated discourse analysis, sociolinguistics of hip hop, sociolinguistic scale
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Technologizing cultures of protest
  • 3.Thailand’s 2014 coup and political protests
  • 4.Rap origins
  • 5.Global hip hop
  • 6.Rap and political discourse in Asia
  • 7.Multimodal critical discourse analysis and rap/hip-hop
  • 8.Methodology
  • 9.Analysis and discussion: Analyzing the multimodality of civic engagement
    • 9.1The social actor
      • 9.1.1RAD’s My Country Has
      • 9.1.2Thailand 4.0
    • 9.2Lyrics
    • 9.3Music rap flow
    • 9.1Image, setting and scene
  • 10.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 4 November 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.22006.deg
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