Navigating between ‘global’ and ‘local’: a transmodal genre analysis of flight safety videos

2.1 Flight safety videos as an interdiscursive genre

Flight safety videos can be considered an emergent genre that has been evolving over the years to adapt to the changing times. Typical flight safety videos often embody the mixing, embedding, or even blending of “socially accepted communicative purposes conventionally served by two different genres to create hybrid (both mixed and embedded) genres” (Bhatia 2004, p. 99). The tripartite function of flight safety videos as primarily providing safety information, supplemented by airline and destination branding discourses, has increasingly turned flight safety videos into “hybrid genres”, especially in the post-pandemic era when the entire aviation industry, as well as the tourism industry, are trying to recover from the loss in tourism during the pandemic. Such appropriation of generic resources from one genre to construct another (new) genre “invades” the “territorial integrity” of well-established genres, but is nevertheless a feature of modern-day communicative practices made even more salient by digital media (Bhatia 2004, p. 100). Such appropriation of generic resources is referred to as interdiscursivity – “innovative attempts to create various forms of hybrid and relatively novel constructs by appropriating or exploiting established conventions or resources associated with other genres and practices” (Bhatia 2004, 1997, 2010, cited in Bhatia 2010, p. 35). While flight safety video is not a new genre, the genre has been transitioning from solely delivering safety information a decade ago, to increasingly being crafted as a space for airline and destination branding. Such transitions have become vital since the COVID pandemic, as the imperative to brand air travel as a luxurious experience has intensified. Flight safety videos have increasingly displayed innovative attempts to push and transcend the boundaries of genre conventions with other established genre conventions, such as instructional and promotional videos, each of which has its own distinct genre norms, but their boundaries are increasingly blurred in flight safety videos. The ‘blending’ of these discourses thus turns flight safety videos into an interdiscursive genre. An examination of flight safety videos created by major airlines would find that they typically contain safety information, airline branding, and destination branding which includes branding of the country or region where the airline is based, and could also include branding of the global and local destinations that the airline serves. Flight safety videos are therefore an emergent genre that is embedded within a particular professional practice (primarily the aviation industry, but also increasingly the tourism industry), and professional culture (aviation culture that prioritizes safety which also situates between branding and identity construction to appeal to both global and local passengers^[2]). In particular, the dual need to appeal to and educate global and local passengers is one of the contributing factors to the hybridity of the flight safety video genre, resulting in a ‘paradox’. In Catenaccio’s (2008) examination of the hybridity of corporate press releases, the author documented the ‘paradox’ of the press release genre as the tension between overt promotion and maintaining the objectivity of disseminating information. Similarly, flight safety videos exhibit a similar ‘paradox’ between balancing entertainment and promotional content, such as the use of humor and celebrities (Molesworth 2014; Seneviratne and Molesworth 2015) while simultaneously having to ensure the clear and effective communication of safety information.^[3] Furthermore, the change in medium, material affordances, as well as the expanding intended audience also play a crucial role in the development and shifting conventions of the genre, that flight safety videos are no longer exclusive to passengers inside an aircraft; the videos are often uploaded to the official social media channels run by the airlines which may have contributed to changes in the genre, such as the shift from purely transactional (i.e. conveying safety information), to more interpersonal (i.e. airline and destination branding).

2.2 Flight safety videos as a realization of ‘banal globalization’

‘Banal globalization’ is a term coined by Thurlow and Jaworski (2010) to refer to “routinized enactments of global capitalism” (p. 21) that are “rooted in everyday communicative actions and textual practices” (p. 226). Examples such as route maps in in-flight magazines (Thurlow and Jaworski 2003) and tailfin designs (Thurlow and Aiello 2007) illustrate how seemingly mundane texts are sites to discursively construct how globalization is realized and enacted discursively ‘from below’ – not necessarily driven by institutional or top-down forces, but is enacted and reproduced through texts in everyday life. For instance, Thurlow and Jaworski (2003) found that route maps shown in in-flight magazines produced by airlines are designed strategically so that national boundaries are not depicted, hence showing a globalized world without borders. This semiotic realization of globalization is felt “at the level of ‘innocent’ texts and ‘harmless’ (inter)actions that globalization is actually realized” (Thurlow and Jaworski 2011, p. 308). At the same time, route maps also depict the country or region where the airline is based at the center of the globalized world, thus performing an image-building function. Hence, airline branding involves a complex tension between globalization and localization, international and national orientations, semiotic uniformity, and semiotic diversity (Thurlow and Aiello 2007; Thurlow and Jaworski 2003). Flight safety videos, as one of the most customer-facing and influential tourism discourses that allow airlines to communicate directly with passengers, are at the forefront of navigating this complexity. As Thurlow and Aiello (2007) point out, the key question at the core of airline branding is “how airlines are able to service national identity concerns through the use of highly localized visual meanings while also appealing to the meaning systems of the international market in their pursuit of symbolic and economic capital” (p. 305). The dual demand to position the airline as both global and local highlights the need to investigate how such ‘banal globalization’ rooted in mundane texts is realized semiotically, and how notions of ‘global’ and ‘local’ are simply inadequate to make sense of the highly complex and diverse world. From a ‘trans-’ perspective which advocates for the need to transcend boundaries, translocal and transglobal should be seen as mutually constitutive in the flows of communications, rather than seen as two binaries (Hawkins 2021).

2.3 Semiotic assemblage and transmodalities

The notion of semiotic assemblage allows us to understand how the different socioeconomic conditions brought together trajectories of aviation safety, airline and destination branding, as well as a desire for countries and regions to boost tourism and how such trajectories are represented in flight safety videos. This paper therefore considers flight safety videos as a site where a range of linguistic, cultural, historical, and spatial resources are “brought together in particular assemblages in particular moments of time and space” (Pennycook 2017, p. 278). The emphasis is not on identifying what constitutes an assemblage, but on how linguistic and transmodal resources intersect at a particular moment, forming practices in place (Pennycook and Otsuji 2017). Situating the notion of assemblage in flight safety videos, it can be asserted that the three ‘named’ assemblages forming flight safety videos – safety information, airline branding and destination branding discourses – do not have clear boundaries and therefore cannot be neatly demarcated (see discussions above on the hybridity of the genre).

The notion of assemblage “not only questions the boundaries between languages, but also the boundaries between different modes of semiosis” (Pennycook 2017, p. 270). The concepts of ‘transcending’ and ‘crossing’ are captured by the ‘trans-’ turn in applied linguistics which is explained by Hawkins and Mori (2018):

‘Trans-’ can be understood to mean crossing borders or boundaries, and this move toward a ‘trans-’ disposition signals the need to transcend the named and bounded categories that have historically shaped our thinking about the world and its inhabitants, the nature of knowledge, and communicative resources. (p. 1)

The ‘trans-’ turn in applied linguistics seeks to “[destabilize] discretely defined resources” and “focus on the performativity of languaging and literacies, and the multiple, shifting resources that are fluidly intermingled and leveraged in communications” (Canagarajah 2013; Hawkins 2021; Hawkins and Mori 2018, cited in Hawkins 2021, p. 11). This approach allows us to move beyond the ideological superiority of written and spoken language as the most powerful resources and to recognize that other resources, such as images and sound, play an equally significant role in meaning-making. While the field of multimodality has already developed comprehensive analytical toolkits to account for how modes beyond language have different affordances and constraints in meaning-making, and how these modes orchestrate to form multimodal ensembles to generate new meanings (see, e.g. Kress 2010), the concept of transmodalities is rooted in a posthumanist perspective (Barad 2015; Pennycook 2018) which emphasizes the fluidity and interconnectedness of meaning-making resources (Hawkins 2018, 2021; Hawkins and Mori 2018). Modes are no longer seen as distinct and bounded, but as emergent and dynamic as the context changes. Transmodalities draw attention to the chain of semiosis across space and time which allows researchers to understand how meaning travels across different cultures and how they are interpreted and reinterpreted.

While flight safety videos have been extensively studied in aviation safety literature, a majority of which focuses on the use of experimental techniques to ascertain the relationship between the use of humour and celebrities and the effectiveness of the videos (see, e.g. Molesworth 2014; Seneviratne and Molesworth 2015), the effects of medium and mood in the recall of safety messages (see, e.g. Molesworth et al. 2018; Tehrani and Molesworth 2015), as well as the effects of distractors in information recall (see, e.g. Molesworth et al. 2019), there is a paucity of research in flight safety videos’ potential in airline and destination branding within the specific professional practice and culture for which they are created, specifically from the field of applied linguistics. Applied linguistics, as an interdisciplinary field, is well-positioned to contribute to a nuanced understanding of this emergent hybrid genre and how it can be further utilized to fulfil multiple communicative objectives that transcend its primary objective of communicating safety information (transactional goal), to fostering interpersonal goals by promoting airline and destinations’ identities. Taken together, this paper seeks to address the following research questions:

1. How does move analysis reveal the genre characteristics in flight safety videos, and what roles do transmodal resources play in this process?

2. How does the design of flight safety videos construct banal globalization through the dynamic use of transmodal resources?

5.1 Overview of the structure

The safety videos of Singapore Airlines and Qatar Airways both follow a three-move structure: introduction (Move 1), demonstrating safety information (Move 2), and conclusion (Move 3) (see Figure 3), with sub-moves identified within each move (see Figures 4 to 6). As indicated in Figure 3, alongside the delivery of safety and branding information, a narrative develops in a parallel fashion and is tightly interwoven with the other, together fulfilling the communicative purpose of the videos. In both videos, the introduction (Move 1) aims to welcome the passengers and invite them to pay attention to the safety demonstration. Both videos realize this move in a similar way by utilizing semiotic artifacts that make the airline brand identifiable by showing a cabin crew in the airline uniform, or showing the logo of the airline (such as in Qatar Airways) (see Figure 4). In Move 2, demonstrating safety information, a similar set of sub-moves can be found, albeit in a slightly different order (see Figure 5). This uniformity is a result of the need for airlines to abide by regulations mandated by aviation authorities. Nevertheless, airlines have the flexibility to decide how each sub-move is realized, most notably by the use of different transmodal resources. Lastly, move 3 concludes the whole video and both videos invite passengers to pay attention to the safety card, thank the passengers, and conclude with the airline logos (see Figure 6).

Figure 3:

The overall structure of Singapore Airlines and Qatar Airways safety videos.

Figure 4:

Move 1 and its sub-moves identified in Singapore Airlines and Qatar Airways safety videos.

Figure 5:

Move 2 and its sub-moves identified in Singapore Airlines and Qatar Airways safety videos.

Figure 6:

Move 3 and its sub-moves identified in Singapore Airlines and Qatar Airways safety videos.

5.2 Genre characteristics

This section introduces the features of the flight safety videos genre as exemplified in the two cases: (1) airline and destination branding, and (2) communicating safety information. The analysis compares some representative features within each move to demonstrate how the two airlines realize the same move with similar or different transmodal resources to fulfil the communicative purposes of each move, as well as those of the overall video.

5.2.1 Airline and destination branding

Airline and destination branding can be found in all three moves of the two videos, although most of the branding discourses are found in Move 1 and Move 3. In the first move (‘Introduction’), both airlines start their safety video with an opening scene, one featuring the iconic Singapore skyline with landmark architecture and the other featuring a view from above the clouds without any recognizable features, but the airline logo is shown, with English text (‘- Postcards – From Qatar to the world’) (see Figure 7).

Figure 7:

Move 1 of Singapore Airlines and Qatar Airways.

The opening sub-move identifies the destination either through visuals of iconic landmarks in the Singapore Airlines video, or through the use of the airline logo and directly indicating the name (and the country where the airline is based) through the use of written text. Both videos feature a female participant in their cabin crew uniform as part of realizing Move 1, and both create a demand image by looking directly at the audience. This is a way to create engagement and demand attention (Kress and van Leeuwen 2021). Such explicit identification of the airline brand and the location in which the airlines are based using transmodal resources fulfils the purpose of airline and destination branding by conveying the company name, logo, crew uniforms (Liu et al. 2024) and identifying and differentiating a destination (Blain et al. 2005) respectively. Nevertheless, it has to be noted that in the 2024 version of the Qatar Airways safety video, Move 1 is mainly accomplished by showing a celebrity (Keven Hart), and the cabin crew is seen playing a more supportive role (indicated by the direct gaze of Kevin Hart, and the lack of direct gaze by the rest of the crew).

In Move 2, the primary communicative purpose is to demonstrate safety information. The story takes the participants from the two videos on a journey to different parts of Singapore, Qatar, and other global destinations. Every time a new destination is reached, in addition to being shown visually, the name of the location is also shown on the screen to visually and textually identify a destination (Blain et al. 2005). In each destination, participants engaged in different activities, thus creating “a memorable travel experience that is uniquely associated with the destination” (p. 337). The emotions of the participants in each destination seem to be positive, as indicated by the smile on their faces, thus serving the function of establishing and reinforcing the emotional connection to the destination. Furthermore, the second move of the videos also constructs different corporate images of the airlines. The ‘backgrounded’ presence of the cabin crew in both videos foregrounds the experience of the passengers as the airlines’ priority, and they are always available to assist if passengers need help. The cabin crew uniform and the body of the aircraft are also shown at various points during the safety demonstration to construct a visual branding of the airlines.

Move 3 of both videos is marked by inviting passengers to read the safety card. The safety card shows the emergency escape routes. The introduction of the safety card offers a space for airline branding by featuring the cabin crew, either directly addressing the audience, as in the video of Singapore Airlines, or becoming a participant in the broad narrative, as in the video of Qatar Airways. Both videos end with the skyline of the country where the airline is based, with the airline logo (and the aircraft in the case of Qatar Airways) (see Figure 8).

Figure 8:

Sub-moves of Move 3 in Singapore Airlines and Qatar Airways videos.

5.2.2 Communicating safety information

The primary communicative objective of the genre of flight safety video is to communicate and instruct passengers about safety information. Hence, Move 2 (‘Demonstrating safety information’) is the most elaborate and important move in the genre of flight safety videos. Unlike Moves 1 and 3 where airlines have more agency in customizing the content for branding purposes, the information conveyed in Move 2 is regulated by the guidelines of international and national/regional aviation authorities. Due to the limitation of space, this section compares the sub-move of putting on a ‘life vest’ (the term used in the Singapore Airlines video) and a ‘life jacket’ (a term used in the Qatar Airways video).^[7] ‘Life vest’ is the tenth sub-move out of the 12 sub-moves in Singapore Airlines, and the tenth sub-move out of the 13 sub-moves in the Qatar Airways video.

The overall communicative purpose of this move is to demonstrate, using real objects, how to perform the safety instructions. The example of putting on a life vest/life jacket was chosen as a representative example because it involves multiple steps, and this is likely to be one of the least familiar actions for airline passengers due to the low likelihood of them having to perform this in their daily lives (see Figure 9). In the Singapore Airlines video, a family of three prepares to go for a swim in a pool at the Adventure Cove Waterpark, thus creating a scenario where the need for a flotation device, such as a life vest, naturally arises in a water-based setting. The narrator gives instructions in English using an imperative structure, with soft background music:

To put on your life vest, remove it from the plastic cover and slip it over your head. Pass the straps around your waist, connect the clip, and pull to tighten. Inflate the life vest by pulling the red tapes or blowing into the mouthpiece. (Singapore Airlines)

Figure 9:

Sub-move of Move 2 in Singapore Airlines and Qatar Airways videos (Putting on a life vest/life jacket).

The participants demonstrated each step in front of the camera, creating an offer image (by not looking at the camera). The use of an offer image here positions the audience as a participant in the story rather than being addressed. The steps of putting on a life vest are, therefore, made salient by a close orchestration of the spoken and visual modes. The Qatar Airways video features a male and a female participant going on a shopping trip in Beverly Hills. The scene features them shopping in a boutique. Although they are not inside an aircraft, a graphic configuration of an aircraft seat is shown on the bottom right corner of the screen to indicate the positions of the life jacket, and an arrow is used to indicate the direction of retrieving the life jacket (see Figure 9). The cabin crew appears and instructs the participants to sit down in the boutique, where they find a life jacket under the seat. Similar to the Singapore Airlines video, the narration gives instructions in English using an imperative structure:

When instructed by the crew, remove it from its container and pull it over your head. Bring the tape around your waist and fasten in front, pulling firmly to secure. Only inflate the life jacket as you leave the aircraft by pulling the two red toggles sharply downwards. You can also inflate or top up the life jacket by blowing into the mouthpiece. (Qatar Airways)

The participants in both videos demonstrate each step in front of the camera, creating offer images which give salience to the steps of putting on a life jacket. Both videos use camera distance (i.e., close-up shots) to draw the audience’s attention to the specific features of the life vest/jacket, such as the straps, the toggles, the light, and the whistles. In flight safety videos, camera distance is an important framing device to alternate between the narrative frame and the instructional frame. Medium-shots, usually used alongside an offer image, are used to orient viewers to a narrative frame in which the story progresses. Close-up shots, usually used alongside an offer image, give salience to particular equipment in an aircraft and thus invite viewers to position themselves as ‘learners.’

In the Qatar Airways video, the ‘click’ sound of fastening the tape, the sound of the inflation of the life jacket, the sound of blowing air into the mouthpiece, and the sound of the whistle are retained, while in the Singapore Airlines video, such sounds are filtered out to preserve the coherence of the narrative.

Both videos present such instructions with soft background music that conveys a soothing and calm feeling, creating an apparent ‘dissonance’ between the seriousness of the safety information and the relaxing atmosphere of going on a holiday. Such ‘dissonance’ is also created visually by portraying participants having a fun and relaxing time which appears to be contradictory to the potential risks and scenarios that the video aims to prepare passengers for. This could be seen as an attempt to brand air travel as a luxury experience, despite the potential risks associated with flying.

6.1 An assemblage-oriented transmodal understanding of the flight safety video genre

The analysis examines the fluid and dynamic interplay of transmodal resources in conveying safety information. Learning how to put on a life vest/jacket requires a transmodal understanding of how different resources such as the visual appearance of the life vest/jacket, the gestures and embodied actions required to put it on, together with the spoken narration which explains the functions of each part of the life vest/jacket and the sequence of activating them (see Figure 9). These resources interact and flow into one another, and not one resource can be taken away to effectively convey the message.

The concept of assemblage highlights that language and transmodal resources are constantly under construction as social conditions change, encouraging researchers to focus on understanding social action rather than language and transmodal resources as predefined categories (Pennycook 2024). Thinking of language and transmodal resources as assemblage can shed light on the fluidity and the dynamic nature of the flight safety video genre which undergoes development over time based on the socioeconomic needs of the aviation industry, tourism, and even passengers’ beliefs. Evoking the concept of assemblage which highlights the situatedness of transmodal resources available at a given moment and place, we can see how the flight safety video genre cannot be seen as a static genre with fixed characteristics. Flight safety videos are understood within the multiple intersecting discourses of, for example, guidelines issued by the regulatory authorities, aircraft safety briefing cards, as well as cabin crews’ safety demonstrations inside an aircraft, forming what Hafner (2018) refers to as “a part of a larger intertextual system” (p. 26). Furthermore, when such videos are viewed outside of an aircraft, such as on YouTube, the meaning created would be a different one, and additional meanings are co-constructed through viewers’ comments.

The medium in which flight safety videos are designed to appear has increasingly played a crucial role in shaping the genre, shifting its communicative purpose from predominantly transactional when viewed exclusively in an aircraft just before it takes off, to increasingly more interpersonal as these videos are increasingly being used by airlines and tourism boards to construct a positive national/corporate identity. In Catenaccio’s (2008) examination of press releases, the author points out that the extension of the readership of press releases from the selected journalistic profession to a general audience afforded by web distribution “may have caused some textual conventions to shift”, such as the “amount of promotional language allowable” (p. 15). Furthermore, the shift in the medium and material affordances has resulted in an extension of the targeted audience, from passengers inside an aircraft to the general public watching these videos at home. Taken together, genre characteristics emerge as a result of the flow of transmodal resources that each situation makes available at a given moment. A preliminary examination of the comments section of the two airlines shows that the videos can evoke mostly positive feelings from viewers’ previous travel experiences with the airline, and prompt them to share their emotions about the country the airline is based in, as well as the destinations the airline flies to:

As an expat living in Singapore, this [video] reconnects me with the times before travel ceased and makes me emotional. Singapore Airlines is the feeling of home, the feeling of safety and the feeling of adventure too (often going somewhere new from Changi). Beautiful airline, wonderful service and adore traveling them. Travel experience is seamless, but most important, consistent. (Comment from one viewer of the Singapore Airlines video)

Awesome video . This debut was 10 says [sic] too late for our last trip on Qatar. Looking forward to future travels to Cape Town and Banana Island, in addition to return visits to Kuala Lumpur and the Maldives (Comment from one viewer of the Qatar Airways video)

6.2 The construction of banal globalization as spatial transpositioning

As highlighted in Thurlow and Aiello (2007), airline branding involves navigating the complex tension between globalization and localization, international and national orientations, semiotic uniformity and semiotic diversity. Global and local elements are realized transmodally and they are incorporated in the video seamlessly. For example, both videos seamlessly combine the use of globally-recognized gestures and symbols (such as fastening a seat belt, and putting on a life jacket) with visual content that indexes local cultural identity (such as the cabin crew uniform and local skyline and landmark buildings – see Figures 7 and 8). Such blending transcends the artificial divide between global and local semiotic elements to construct banal globalization, thereby problematizing the binary distinctions between ‘global’ and ‘local’.

This paper argues that not only is banal globalization a bottom-up and transmodal phenomenon that is rooted in everyday communicative actions and textual practices (Thurlow and Jaworski 2011), it is also a product of what Hawkins (2021) called spatial transpositioning in which communication occurs both translocally and transglobally, mediated through the assemblages of the flow of transmodal resources. Banal globalization is, therefore, a blending of the translocal and the transglobal, a product of the transpositioning of flows of communication. Such crossing, erasing and transcending arbitrarily-constructed boundaries is transformative as they allow for new identities to emerge (ibid). Li and Lee (2024) assert that transpositioning refers to the “flow-and-flux” state in which an entity can be released from given frameworks and generate new identities (p. 5). The genre of flight safety videos, therefore, creates a space for airlines and destinations to find new identities for themselves through the strategic deployment of transmodal resources, such as the alternation of camera distance to move between the instructional and narrative frames, as illustrated in Figure 9.

6.3 Offsetting the risk of air travel

Subliminally, both videos draw on transmodal resources to create an atmosphere in which passengers are pampered and well taken care of, which gives the impression that air travel is a luxury and an elitist pursuit (Thurlow and Jaworski 2010). To be a tourist is a ‘modern’ experience and has become a marker of status (Urry and Larsen 2011), making travellers receptive to the luxurious branding of air travel because they are away from their everyday lives and have a certain level of anticipation of their travels. The use of soothing and calm background music in both videos also reinforces air travel as a relaxing and luxurious experience. However, such a transmodal orchestration appears to run against the (original) communicative purpose of the video, which is to instruct passengers on how to protect themselves should an emergency occur. Such a design is in line with Murphy’s (2001) argument that “air travel performance is carefully designed to distract passengers from the potential risks of flight” (p. 31). Flight safety videos are therefore at the forefront of navigating the tension between alerting passengers of the potential dangers of flying on the one hand, and promoting air travel as a luxurious experience on the other.

One way this tension is navigated is by representing air travel in a decontextualized way. Unlike other instructional genres where it is important to be as realistic as possible (see, e.g., Hafner (2018) on video methods articles), an increasing number of flight safety videos feature passengers outside of the aircraft and carrying out everyday activities while key safety objects such as seat belts and life jackets would appear unexpectedly, sometimes evoking humour. For example, in the Qatar Airways video, two life jackets can be found under the seats in a boutique in Beverly Hills in an unexpected way. Instead of putting on the life jacket inside an aircraft, the action is done in a boutique (see Figure 9). While filming the videos in a decontextualized setting could make the videos more appealing to watch and enable the airlines to creatively use the setting for branding purposes, whether the narrative of the flight safety video would become a distractor remains to be seen,^[8] especially for first-time flyers who may not have the semiotic knowledge of flying in an aircraft.