Overview

Successful communication requires optimal relevance to a target audience. Relevance theory (RT) provides an excellent model based on this insight, but the impact of the theory has until now been restricted due to an almost exclusive focus on spoken face-to-face communication. Visual and Multimodal Communication: Applying the Relevance Principle is the first book to systematically demonstrate how RT can fulfill its promise to develop into an inclusive theory of communication. In this book, Charles Forceville refines and adapts RT's original claims to show its applicability to static visuals and multimodal discourses in popular culture genres. Using colorful examples, he explains how RT can be expanded and adapted to accommodate mass-communicative visual and visual-plus-verbal messages. Forceville addresses issues such as the difference between drawing prospective addressees' attention to a message and persuading them to accept it; the thorny continuum from implicit to explicit information; and the role of genre. Case studies of pictograms, advertisements, cartoons, and comics provide contemporary and accessible examples of the importance of genre and of how the RT model can be connected to other approaches. By expanding the application of relevance theory to include mass-communicative messages, Visual and Multimodal Communication reintroduces a central framework of cognitive linguistics and pragmatics to a new audience and paves the way for an inclusive theory of communication.

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9780190845261

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Reviews

Highly original and thought-provoking, Visual and Multimodal Communication offers a wealth of insights into the effects these forms of communication achieve. Using the framework of relevance theory, it presents a series of beautifully illustrated case studies showing how coding, inference, genre and world knowledge interact in the interpretation of advertisements, political cartoons and comics from many cultures. Essential reading for students and researchers in pragmatics, linguistics, art and communication studies. -- Deirdre Wilson, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics, UCL Lucidly and with copious erudition, the book accomplishes a fascinating objective: astutely extending Relevance Theory to account for visual and multimodal meaning-making. Charles Forceville formulates his argumentation for an overarching model of communication with conviction and elegance. He sensibly relates static visuals-text combinations to the central notions of media, context, and genre. Offering both broad theoretical footing and invaluable case studies on public graphic signage, advertising, cartoons, and comics, the book will be a must-read in multimodality research and beyond. -- Hartmut St ckl, Professor of English and Applied Linguistics, University of Salzburg, Austria

Author Information

Charles Forceville is Associate Professor of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Committed to cognitivist, socio-biological, and relevance-theoretical approaches, he works on multimodality in metaphor, argumentation, and narrative discourse. He is author of Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising (1996) and co-editor of Multimodal Metaphor (2009), Creativity and the Agile Mind (2013), and Multimodal Argumentation and Rhetoric in Media Genres (2017).

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