The British Empire in BBC travel documentaries: investigating multimodal manipulation

Conference paper


Castaldi, J. 2021. The British Empire in BBC travel documentaries: investigating multimodal manipulation.
AuthorsCastaldi, J.
TypeConference paper
Description

The path towards economic and social equality between Britain and ex-colonies, and between people within ex-colonies, can be arduous if the public opinion does not appreciate the extent of past colonial exploitation and its long-lasting effects. Indeed, recent opinion polls (YouGov, 2014, 2016, 2019) suggest that the British Empire is still seen in a favourable or neutral way by a significant part of the British population.
Multimodal media manipulation can play a pivotal role in hindering this process of critical awareness. Despite some disagreement on what manipulation is and how it works, scholars in Critical Discourse Studies and pragmatics have found Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995) useful in investigating manipulative processes thanks to its theorisation of variable contexts and individual cognitive environments (de Saussure, 2005; Maillat and Oswald, 2009; Hart, 2013; Maillat, 2013; Oswald, 2014). The paper focuses on the representation of the British Empire in two BBC documentaries, Burma with Simon Reeve, episode 1 (2018) and The Great Australian Railway Journeys: Adelaide to Perth (2019), and how this is negotiated by two British viewers.
This paper begins with an overview of the concepts of manipulation and epistemic vigilance (Sperber et al., 2010). Then, it exemplifies the analysis of multimodal manipulation by looking at the representation of the British Empire and by focussing on social actors and processes (van Leeuwen, 1996). Finally, by combining reception theory and principles from Relevance Theory, the paper investigates media effects and manipulation in individual media interactions drawing on a novel methodological approach for the analysis of media effects (Author, 2021). The reception element, moreover, allows to triangulate the researcher’s semiotic analysis with that of the viewers and to validate analytical and interpretative constructs borrowed from Social Semiotics (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996, 2001; van Leeuwen 1999) and Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies (Machin and Mayr, 2012; Machin 2014) for the analysis of social actors and processes.

KeywordsMultimodal manipulation; Travel documentaries; Audience research; Relevance theory
Year2021
Conference30th European Systemic Functional Linguistics Conference
Official URLhttps://www.esflc2020.org.uk/
Publication process dates
Deposited05 Oct 2022
Permalink -

https://repository.canterbury.ac.uk/item/92qqw/the-british-empire-in-bbc-travel-documentaries-investigating-multimodal-manipulation

  • 7
    total views
  • 0
    total downloads
  • 2
    views this month
  • 0
    downloads this month

Export as

Related outputs

Beyond language: multimodal literacy and ELT. Opportunities and challenges
Castaldi, J. 2023. Beyond language: multimodal literacy and ELT. Opportunities and challenges.
Ideology and manipulation in travel documentaries: a cognitive-semiotic approach
Castaldi, J. 2022. Ideology and manipulation in travel documentaries: a cognitive-semiotic approach.
Cognition and ideological effects in the interaction between viewers and BBC travel documentaries: combining multimodal critical discourse analysis and audience research
Castaldi, J. 2022. Cognition and ideological effects in the interaction between viewers and BBC travel documentaries: combining multimodal critical discourse analysis and audience research.
Keeping the myth of the British Empire alive: combining a multi-semiotic analysis of two BBC travel documentaries with audience research
Castaldi, J. 2022. Keeping the myth of the British Empire alive: combining a multi-semiotic analysis of two BBC travel documentaries with audience research.
Political semiotics in non-political genres: investigating multimodal manipulation
Castaldi, J. 2022. Political semiotics in non-political genres: investigating multimodal manipulation.
Multimodal manipulation in travel documentaries: bypassing epistemic vigilance
Castaldi, J. 2021. Multimodal manipulation in travel documentaries: bypassing epistemic vigilance.
Cognition and ideological effects in the interaction between viewers and BBC travel and cultural documentaries: combining multimodal critical discourse analysis and audience research
Castaldi, J. 2021. Cognition and ideological effects in the interaction between viewers and BBC travel and cultural documentaries: combining multimodal critical discourse analysis and audience research . PhD Thesis Canterbury Christ Church University Centre for Language and Linguistics
A multimodal analysis of the representation of the Rohingya crisis in BBC’s Burma with Simon Reeve (2018): Integrating Audience Research in Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies
Castaldi, Jacopo 2020. A multimodal analysis of the representation of the Rohingya crisis in BBC’s Burma with Simon Reeve (2018): Integrating Audience Research in Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies. Multimodal Communication. 10 (1), pp. 55-72. https://doi.org/10.1515/mc-2020-0014