Music As Multimodal Discourse ─ Semiotics, Power and Protest

We communicate multimodally. Everyday communication involves not only words, but gestures, images, videos, sounds and of course, music. Music has traditionally been viewed as a separate object that we can isolate, discuss, perform and listen to. However, much of music's power lies in its use as multimodal communication. It is not just lyrics which lend songs their meaning, but images and musical sounds as well.

This book considers musical sound as multimodal communication, examining the interacting meaning potential of sonic aspects such as rhythm, instrumentation, pitch, tonality, melody and their interrelationships with text, image and other modes. This draws upon and extends the conceptual territory occupied by social semiotics. In so doing, this book brings together research from scholars to explore questions around how we communicate through musical discourse, and in the discourses of music. Methods in this collection are drawn from critical discourse analysis, social semiotics and music studies to expose both the function and semiotic potential of the various modes used in songs and other musical texts. These analyses reveal how each mode works in various contexts from around the world, often articulating counter-hegemonic and subversive discourses of identity and belonging.

This project extends the influential work of van Leeuwen (1999) and Machin (2010) on how music articulates discourse, offering up new conceptual methods for multimodal analysis of music and real world examples of music's often powerful effects on listeners and performers.

Lyndon C. S. Way is at Izmir University of Economics, Turkey
Simon McKerrell is at Newcastle University, UK