“The Last Laugh?” A Multimodal Analysis of Captions in Photojournalism
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Mara Logaldo
Mara Logaldo (PhD, English Studies) is tenured Research Fellow in English language and translation at IULM (International University of Languages and Media), Milan, where she teaches courses of British culture and English for Media Studies. Her research interests have mainly focused on rhetoric, media discourse and urban slang (“Only the immigrants can speak the Queen’s English these days’ but all kids have a Jamaican accent: overcompensation vs. urban slang in multiethnic London,” in
From International to Local English – And Back Again , eds. Roberta Facchinetti, David Crystal, Barbara Seidlhofer (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007): 115–144), language and law. She has published monographs on Henry James, on discourse analysis, on New Journalism and, more recently, on communication in the age of Augmented Reality (Augmented Linguistics , (Milano: Arcipelago, 2012)). Among her latest publications, “On Crimes, Punishments, and Words. Legal and Language Issues in Cesare Beccaria’s Works,” inLiterature and Human Rights. The Law, the Language and the Limitations of Human Rights Discourse , ed. Ian Ward (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2015): 289–308. She has been a member of AIDEL since 2008.
Abstract
It is generally agreed that in photojournalism pictures come first. However, also the short verbal texts that accompany them play a crucial role, as they lead readers among the different signifieds of the image. A multimodal discourse analysis of captions will aptly consider both the linguistic elements that appear within the verbal discourse and the image-text relation. The interconnectedness of captions and pictures has lately been defined as a “loop,” a view which blurs the traditional distinction between anchoring and relaying processes theorized by Barthes. The association of the relaying function with comics, however, seems to establish an interesting point of contact between photojournalism and pop art. Captions actually show the tension between “high” and “low” culture, the former being traditionally identified with the word and the latter with the image. While in the heyday of photojournalism captions were made necessary by the poor quality of the photographs, they soon began to provide an abstractive summary of the story told by the picture. This selective process involves interpretation. For this reason, captions can be ethically misleading and even legally controversial forms of discourse, for instance when they are used instrumentally to convey a specific point of view. In photojournalism dealing with crime cases, in particular, captions may display a sensationalist and populist view of justice, thus articulating the thoughts of public opinion supported by the newspaper’s stand. My case study focuses on the caption that accompanied the photo portraying Perry Smith and Richard Hickock while leaving the courtroom on March 29, 1960. The two murderers – who have become famous after the publication of the documentary novel In Cold Blood – had just been sentenced to death by hanging. As reported by Capote, the caption that appeared in the Kansas newspaper read “The Last Laugh?” Starting from this case, the present work will try to investigate the complexity of captions as multimodal forms of discourse.
About the author
Mara Logaldo (PhD, English Studies) is tenured Research Fellow in English language and translation at IULM (International University of Languages and Media), Milan, where she teaches courses of British culture and English for Media Studies. Her research interests have mainly focused on rhetoric, media discourse and urban slang (“Only the immigrants can speak the Queen’s English these days’ but all kids have a Jamaican accent: overcompensation vs. urban slang in multiethnic London,” in From International to Local English – And Back Again, eds. Roberta Facchinetti, David Crystal, Barbara Seidlhofer (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007): 115–144), language and law. She has published monographs on Henry James, on discourse analysis, on New Journalism and, more recently, on communication in the age of Augmented Reality (Augmented Linguistics, (Milano: Arcipelago, 2012)). Among her latest publications, “On Crimes, Punishments, and Words. Legal and Language Issues in Cesare Beccaria’s Works,” in Literature and Human Rights. The Law, the Language and the Limitations of Human Rights Discourse, ed. Ian Ward (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2015): 289–308. She has been a member of AIDEL since 2008.
© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Focus
- Equity and the Resources of Critique: Part II
- Aristotle’s Pharmacy
- Law and Equity, and “Law and History” as a Resource of Critique
- Equity and Legal Reasoning
- Equity and the Social Reproduction of Capital
- Equity, Property, and the Ethical Subject
- The Castrated Trustee: Jouissance and Breach of Trust
- Tending the Garden: Equity and Exscription
- From Helen’s Pharmacy to the Multiverse of Equities: Difference, Opposition, Différance
- Research
- Paul Johnston’s Body Politic: A Speculative Fable
- Utopias in The Tempest
- Spatial Imaginaries and the Sovereign Crisis
- From Hard-Copy to Digital Law via “Illustrated Courtrooms”: Visualising the History of Legal English
- “The Last Laugh?” A Multimodal Analysis of Captions in Photojournalism
- How to Enforce the Law: Video-Shocks for Road Security
- Book Review
- Sidia Fiorato and John Drakakis: Performing the Renaissance Body. Essays on Drama, Law, and Representation
