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Part of
Media as Procedures of Communication
Edited by Martin Luginbühl and Jan Georg Schneider
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 348] 2024
► pp. 68–96

Chapter 4
“Do you have an idea what this clown is doing?”

Multimodal media staging in the first presidential debate and the vice presidential debate 2020

| University of Basel
| University of Kaiserslautern-Landau
This article examines how the medium TV shaped the first presidential and the vice presidential debate in the 2020 US election. We will argue that different dimensions of human communication, like medium and semiotic modes, interact and that therefore the use of semiotic modes like spoken language, moving images or movements of body parts is shaped by the medial procedure from the outset. Media are therefore more than just technical infrastructures in a narrow sense, they include the constitution of signs, including their materiality and processuality. The article will illustrate corresponding media procedures and their interdependence with semiotic modes, analyzing selected sequences of the two debates. The analysis will show how structural aspects of the medium shape aspects of the conversation (turn-taking, topic management etc.), of the use of the body (gestures, gaze), and of camera work (split screen, switched screen). In a last section, we will relate our findings to the conceptualization of ‘medium’ and ‘canvas’ by Bateman et al. (2017).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical approach
  • 3.“Do you have an idea what this clown is doing?” Analysis of examples from the first presidential debate
  • 4.“Mister Vice President, I’m speaking!” Analysis of examples from the vice-presidential debate
  • 5.On the relation between semiotic modes and media
  • 6.Questions, results and connections
  • Author queries
  • Notes
  • References
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
References (53)
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