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Part of
Engagement in Professional Genres
Edited by Carmen Sancho Guinda
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 301] 2019
► pp. 157–178

Chapter 9
Multiplying engagement

Visual-verbal intersemiosis in an online medical research article

| Østfold University College, Norway, and University of Gothenburg, Sweden
This paper explores how the textual voice in an online medical research article engages and positions itself with respect to other voices in the communicative context. Taking a systemic-functional, social-semiotic approach, I examine engagement intersemiotically, with regard to the deployment and integration of visual and verbal resources; interstratally, from the levels of (lexico-)grammar (‘from below’) and genre and ideology (‘from above’); and logogenetically, as the text unfolds. The analysis suggests a text that variously opens and closes dialogic space as the textual voice seeks to (dis)align the reader with various positions construed in the text. Some of those positionings cannot be fully appreciated without an intersemiotic perspective, making it an essential part of understanding how experts engage through specialized genres.
Keywords: engagement, dialogic theory, social semiotics, Systemic Functional Linguistics, appraisal, multimodality, intersemiosis, medical research
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.A dialogic theory of language
  • 3.Verbal construal of engagement
  • 4.Visual construal of engagement
  • 5.Multiplying engagement: Visual-verbal intersemiosis
  • 6.Engagement in multimodal texts: Some concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 April 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.301.09fry
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