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“By the way I want to give you some masks”: exploring multimodal stance-taking in YouTube videos

  • Wing Yee Jenifer Ho

    Wing Yee Jenifer Ho is Assistant Professor at Department of English and Communication, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her main research interest is informal/recreational language learning, especially language learning of adults in the digital wild. She explores out-of-class, digital teaching and learning environments using social semiotic multimodality and translanguaging as analytical tools. She also has great interests in developing innovative qualitative research methods in applied linguistics. Other research interests include multilingualism, digital multimodal composing, linguistic/semiotic landscape, digital literacies, and ethical issues related to digital research.

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Published/Copyright: January 2, 2024
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Applied Linguistics Review
From the journal Applied Linguistics Review Volume 16 Issue 1

Abstract

While the effectiveness of facemasks against COVID-19 has now become largely uncontroversial, at the beginning of the global pandemic, wearers of facemasks were often the target of sometimes racially tinged attacks. Wearing facemasks (or not) became not just a question of science, but evolved into a more complex issue of social identity, morality and global citizenship embedded within the “tribal thinking” of mask-wearers and non-mask-wearers. This paper explores to what extent two bilingual YouTube influencers participated in either accentuating or softening of boundaries of the two “tribes” by embedding facemasks in their videos. Based on multimodal transcriptions of the two videos (Wang, Yilei, Dezheng Feng & Wing Y. J. Ho. 2021. Identity, lifestyle, and face-mask branding: A social semiotic multimodal discourse analysis. Multimodality & Society 1(2). 216–237), three moments were identified where facemasks were employed by the social actors to perform everyday activities, such as grocery shopping and family brunch. I then examine the interactional stances (Dubois, John W. 2007. The stance triangle. In Robert Englebretson (ed.), Stancetaking in discourse: Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction, 139–182. Amsterdam: John Benjamins) taken by the actors towards facemasks through language and other semiotic resources. By exploring their multimodal stance-taking, it is argued that the two YouTubers’ intercultural trajectories, their performances of authenticity, and their established influence on social media provided them unique means for participating in tribalizing discourses around facemasks by making perceived differences between different groups materials for cultural consumption. The paper concludes by discussing the opportunities and challenges of vernacular health communication through social media influencers.

Keywords: intercultural communication; multimodality; video-mediated communication
Corresponding author: Wing Yee Jenifer Ho, Department of English and Communication, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong, Email:

About the author

Wing Yee Jenifer Ho

Wing Yee Jenifer Ho is Assistant Professor at Department of English and Communication, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her main research interest is informal/recreational language learning, especially language learning of adults in the digital wild. She explores out-of-class, digital teaching and learning environments using social semiotic multimodality and translanguaging as analytical tools. She also has great interests in developing innovative qualitative research methods in applied linguistics. Other research interests include multilingualism, digital multimodal composing, linguistic/semiotic landscape, digital literacies, and ethical issues related to digital research.

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Supplementary Material

This article contains supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2023-0262).

Received: 2023-11-14
Accepted: 2023-11-20
Published Online: 2024-01-02
Published in Print: 2025-01-29

© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Special Issue: Tribal Epistemologies and the discursive construction of COVID-19 knowledge; Guest Editor: Rodney H. Jones
  3. Disciplinary tribes and the discourse of mainstream media expert opinion articles: evidencing COVID-19 knowledge claims for a public audience
  4. Ways of seeing and discourse strategies of naming the novel coronavirus in the US and Hong Kong
  5. Who is our friend and who is our enemy? The enregisterment of tribalising digital discourse during the COVID-19 pandemic
  6. “By the way I want to give you some masks”: exploring multimodal stance-taking in YouTube videos
  7. Affective geographies and tribal epistemologies: studying abroad during COVID-19
  8. Editorial
  9. Tribal epistemologies and the discursive construction of COVID-19 knowledge
  10. Special Issue: Against Epistemological Theft and Appropriation; Guest Editors: Othman Z. Barnawi and Hamza R’boul
  11. The myopic focus on decoloniality in applied linguistics and English language education: citations and stolen subjectivities
  12. The bidirectionality of epistemological theft and appropriation: contrastive rhetoric in China
  13. Attempts at including, mediating and creating ‘new’ knowledges: problematising appropriation in intercultural communication education and research
  14. Epistemological theft and appropriation in qualitative inquiry in applied linguistics: lessons from Halaqa
  15. Can the subaltern speak in autoethnography?: knowledging through dialogic and retro/intro/pro-spective reflection to stand against epistemic violence
  16. The violence of literature review and the imperative to ask new questions
  17. Editorial
  18. Against epistemological theft and appropriation in applied linguistics research
  19. Special Issue: Art as social practice: language and marginality; Guest Editors: Roberta Piazza, Birgul Yilmaz and Charlotte Taylor
  20. ‘Art as social practice: language and marginality’: Special Issue of Applied Linguistics Review
  21. Objects are not just a thing – (re)negotiating identity through using material objects within the Kurdish diaspora in the UK
  22. “I am surprised they have allowed you in here to do this”: women’s prison writing as heterotopic space of narrative inclusion
  23. Walking with: understandings and negotiations of the mundane in research
  24. Translanguaging art – Questioning boundaries in Monika Szydłowska’s Do you miss your country?
  25. Reinventing the self through participatory art: writing and performing among rough sleepers
  26. Research Articles
  27. Expectation-practice discrepancies: a transcultural exploration of Chinese students’ oral discourse socialization in German academia
  28. Perceived teacher feedback practices, student feedback motivation and engagement in English learning: a survey of Chinese university students
  29. Incidental vocabulary learning from listening, reading, and viewing captioned videos: frequency and prior vocabulary knowledge
  30. A longitudinal study on lecture listening difficulties and self-regulated learning strategies across different proficiency levels in EMI higher education
  31. Secondary students’ L2 writing motivation and engagement: the impact of teachers’ instructional approaches and feedback practices
  32. Marked on the voice: the visibility experiences of Russian heritage migrants following the war against Ukraine
https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2023-0262
Keywords for this article
intercultural communication; multimodality; video-mediated communication

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Special Issue: Tribal Epistemologies and the discursive construction of COVID-19 knowledge; Guest Editor: Rodney H. Jones
  3. Disciplinary tribes and the discourse of mainstream media expert opinion articles: evidencing COVID-19 knowledge claims for a public audience
  4. Ways of seeing and discourse strategies of naming the novel coronavirus in the US and Hong Kong
  5. Who is our friend and who is our enemy? The enregisterment of tribalising digital discourse during the COVID-19 pandemic
  6. “By the way I want to give you some masks”: exploring multimodal stance-taking in YouTube videos
  7. Affective geographies and tribal epistemologies: studying abroad during COVID-19
  8. Editorial
  9. Tribal epistemologies and the discursive construction of COVID-19 knowledge
  10. Special Issue: Against Epistemological Theft and Appropriation; Guest Editors: Othman Z. Barnawi and Hamza R’boul
  11. The myopic focus on decoloniality in applied linguistics and English language education: citations and stolen subjectivities
  12. The bidirectionality of epistemological theft and appropriation: contrastive rhetoric in China
  13. Attempts at including, mediating and creating ‘new’ knowledges: problematising appropriation in intercultural communication education and research
  14. Epistemological theft and appropriation in qualitative inquiry in applied linguistics: lessons from Halaqa
  15. Can the subaltern speak in autoethnography?: knowledging through dialogic and retro/intro/pro-spective reflection to stand against epistemic violence
  16. The violence of literature review and the imperative to ask new questions
  17. Editorial
  18. Against epistemological theft and appropriation in applied linguistics research
  19. Special Issue: Art as social practice: language and marginality; Guest Editors: Roberta Piazza, Birgul Yilmaz and Charlotte Taylor
  20. ‘Art as social practice: language and marginality’: Special Issue of Applied Linguistics Review
  21. Objects are not just a thing – (re)negotiating identity through using material objects within the Kurdish diaspora in the UK
  22. “I am surprised they have allowed you in here to do this”: women’s prison writing as heterotopic space of narrative inclusion
  23. Walking with: understandings and negotiations of the mundane in research
  24. Translanguaging art – Questioning boundaries in Monika Szydłowska’s Do you miss your country?
  25. Reinventing the self through participatory art: writing and performing among rough sleepers
  26. Research Articles
  27. Expectation-practice discrepancies: a transcultural exploration of Chinese students’ oral discourse socialization in German academia
  28. Perceived teacher feedback practices, student feedback motivation and engagement in English learning: a survey of Chinese university students
  29. Incidental vocabulary learning from listening, reading, and viewing captioned videos: frequency and prior vocabulary knowledge
  30. A longitudinal study on lecture listening difficulties and self-regulated learning strategies across different proficiency levels in EMI higher education
  31. Secondary students’ L2 writing motivation and engagement: the impact of teachers’ instructional approaches and feedback practices
  32. Marked on the voice: the visibility experiences of Russian heritage migrants following the war against Ukraine
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