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How to have fun with sticks, bowls, and colored water: insights into multimodal signifier operations through Lacan’s four discourses

  • Jason Ranker EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: June 2, 2021

Abstract

In this manuscript, I present a signifier-based, multimodal discourse analysis of a focal event involving four children (ages 4–5) as they interacted with materials and with one another in their preschool classroom. I draw upon Jacques Lacan’s theory of the four discourses, applying the mathemes, or formulas that he developed, in order to map the multimodal signifier operations as they occurred in the moment-to-moment interactions during the event. My purpose was to use the signifier as a conceptual tool for multimodal discourse analysis, which revealed the highly particular discursive agencies that are characteristic aspects of signifier operations. Further, I examined the movement and operations of the signifiers as they were drawn from across modes and combined to create opportunities for the subjects to participate in the discourse. These signifier operations occurred according to discursive agencies of an educational discourse that both reduced and delimited subjectivities, as well as agencies that the focal subjects introduced to challenge and re-signify toward new ways to participate in the discourse.


Corresponding author: Jason Ranker, Portland State University, Portland, USA, E-mail:

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Received: 2020-03-13
Accepted: 2021-05-11
Published Online: 2021-06-02

© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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