Visual Discourses of War ─ A Multimodal Approach

This book is a multimodal critical discourse analysis of visual discourses of war realized in different genres of communication in Britain, the US, and Europe over the last 150 years. It argues that while there has been extensive work produced on the linguistic realization of discourses of war, for example through the speeches of politicians and official documents, there has been a lack of attention to the way that these discourses are disseminated visually through a range of genres of communication. It argues that war and conflict are legitimized not just in official speeches and news texts but through toys, photography, news footage, computer war games, war monuments, and sites of heritage tourism.

The book shows how discourses of war have changed over time and how the visual has a particularly important role due to its less denotative and more symbolic nature as compared to language.

David Machin works in the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies. His recent books include, Global Media Discourse (2007) Routledge co-authored with Theo van Leeuwen, Introduction to Multimodal Analysis (2007) Arnold and News Production: Theory and Practice (2006), Routledge, co-authored with Sarah Niblock. He has just finished a book on Multimodality for Sage titled Analysing Popular Music and edited a volume collection on Media Audiences, with Barrie Gunter. He has published numerous articles in reviewed journals especially in the field of visual communication and discourse analysis.

Gill Abousnnouga teaches on the Language and Communication programme at The University of Glamorgan. Her research interests are in the application of visual communication theories to the analysis of military discourse. Her recent publications are: Abousnouga, G, and Machin, D. (2009) Analysing the Language of War Monuments, Visual Communication, (In Press) and Abousnnouga, G. and Machin, D. (2000) the Visual Institutionalisation of Discourses in War Monuments, in Mayr, A. (ed.) Language and Power: an introduction to institutional Discourse, London, Continuum.