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Given the rise in far-right and populist rhetoric in Europe, particularly in light of the 2015 refugee crisis and the racist and xenophobic responses to it, this paper provides a multimodal analysis of the campaign slogans and posters of Slovenian political parties that gained parliamentary seats during the 2018 parliamentary elections that were, alongside focusing on issues pertaining to the Slovenian political landscape, heavily infused with concerns and potential solutions on how to tackle the challenges currently faced by Europe. The aim is to examine the linguistic and visual tools used by parties across the political spectrum, and to find out if the use of certain elements is characteristic of a determined political orientation. A brief outline of Slovenian party dynamics and the conditions that have contributed to them is followed by an analysis of the parties' political campaigns. Using the tools of political discourse analysis, the first part is centred around parties' choice of syntax and lexis in their political slogans, as well as the imagery on their posters, whereas the second is devoted to a linguistic analysis of how parties frame and address five key common issues in their political programmes: pensions, corruption, finance, healthcare and safety. Their stances and how these differ or coincide based on their place on the political spectrum are exemplified by short excerpts from the programmes.

Abstract
Drawing from televised COVID-19 press briefings, this study explicates how the interplay between verbal and visual
resources help policy makers restore public trust following organization-level failures by neutralizing unfavorable discourses
that threaten the public's perceptions of their competence, integrity and benevolence and by emphasizing positive aspects
associated with these factors. The findings reveal that these mediated multimodal speeches not only prioritize the political
interests of the government by apportioning blame for the surveillance failures, while aggrandizing their ad hoc responses without
addressing the causes. This trust repair practice serves to frame the pandemic – initially as an external biosecurity threat and
subsequently as a natural and expectable characteristic of an infectious disease that can be handled – hinging largely on the
creation of "us-them," which undermines equitable public health objectives and transmission mitigation in the long run.

The challenges of understanding literacy in a digital age -- Defining digital literacy : cognitive, sociocultural, and situated perspectives -- Three propositions about digital media, literacy, and society -- A multidimensional framework for understanding literacy in a digital age -- Interlude : studying digital literacy in a library computer programming club -- Sample analysis : digital literacy demands -- Sample analysis : digital literacy practices -- Sample analysis : discourses of digital literacy.

Multimodal (discourse) analysis is about analyzing and theorizing individual semiotic resources (e.g., language, image, audio, space, gesture, facial expression) and inter-semiotic relations to make meaning of multimodal phenomena in context. Conducting multimodal analyses can be challenging because of its complexity. Computer-based software can support multimodal analysis by automating or semi-automating stages of annotating and analyzing, thus reducing the extensive time and labor required. The designed affordances of the software are aimed at helping researchers establish links between low-level features of multimodal texts and higher-order multimodal semantic meanings by following specific workflows. Amongst many popular multimodal transcription tools (e.g., ELAN, CLAN, ChronoViz), a new open-source multimodal annotation software for video analysis, GRAPE-MARS has been recently launched. This technical review will first describe the organization and affordances of GRAPE-MARS by illustrating a multimodal analysis of a video via this tool. We will then highlight the principal functionalities that make this software efficient in supporting multimodal analysis. Finally, the limitations and future possible applications of GRAPE-MARS will be discussed.

AbstractThis article explores the relevance of semiotic perspectives on and approaches to Interpreting Studies. Interpreting can be perceived as textual (re)production, as communicative interaction, and as a sociocultural activity, and can be studied in the linguistic and structural approach at the micro-dimension, the pragmatic and communicative approach at the meso-dimension, and in the sociocultural approach at the macro-dimension respectively. Different degrees of applicability can be identified in structural semiotics, interpretive semiotics, and social semiotics. Multimodal analysis integrating linguistic semiotics, paralinguistic semiotics, and non-linguistic semiotics is identified as having great potential in examining the communicative process of interpreting in its entirety.

Research in Dialogue Interpreting (DI) has traditionally drawn on qualitative analysis of verbal behaviour to explore the complex dynamics of these 'triadic' exchanges. Less attention has been paid to interpreter-mediated interaction as a situated, embodied activity where resources other than talk (such as gaze, gestures, head and body movement, proxemics) play a central role in the co-construction of the communicative event. This article argues that understanding the complexity of DI requires careful investigation of the interplay between multiple interactional resources, i.e. verbal in conjunction with visual, aural, embodied and spatial meaning-making resources. This call for methodological innovation is strengthened by the emergence of video-mediated interpreting, where interacting via screens without sharing the same physical space adds a further layer of complexity to interactional dynamics. Drawing on authentic extracts from interpreter-mediated interaction, both face-to-face and video-mediated, this article problematizes how the integration of a multimodal perspective into qualitative investigation of interpreter-mediated interaction can contribute to the advancement of our understanding of key interactional dynamics in DI and, in turn, broaden the scope of multimodality to include new, uncharted territory.

This paper examines the contention that an 'autonomous' model of literacy dominates pedagogy and research, emphasising technical outcomes for even the youngest children. It considers theoretical obstacles to alternative research paradigms, particularly a stance that views writing as 'talk written down'. Studies of early mark-making suggest that children's signs are always intentional, already displaying some evidence of systemic principles in relation to writing, drawing, and number. This is supported by theoretical stances in multimodality, social semiotics, and phenomenology. These positions substantiate the development of new methodologies in early literacy research, emphasising interactive processes rather than outcomes. The paper considers the use of micro, multimodal transcripts of video evidence to examine the process of children's sign-making. It looks at vignettes of transcribed data involving children under the age of 3, and the use of microanalysis to investigate early writing.

Square dancing, guangchangwu in Chinese, is a kind of physical activity practiced in flat public spaces for fitness and entertainment. Despite its popularity all over China, there have been news reports on conflicts caused by it, such as noise pollution or use of a public square. This study collects 150 news articles published between May 2016 and May 2018 containing the keyword guangchangwu from the People's Daily, one of the most influential official newspapers owned by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. The purpose of the study is to investigate the government's attitudes towards square dancing through an analysis of the official media discourse, using word frequency of occurrence and multimodal discourse analysis. Both the word count and the co-deployment of visual and linguistic resources indicate that square dancing is perceived as an integral part of promoting the national fitness agenda. While the discourse demonstrates awareness of square dancing in the context of an aging society and a shortage of public space, general approval for it is still quite evident in the frequent positive descriptions in the text and presentations in the images. The use of the word dama 'big mama' in the official media discourse reveals gender inequality in contemporary China.

Square dancing, guangchangwu in Chinese, is a kind of physical activity practiced in flat public spaces for fitness and entertainment. Despite its popularity all over China, there have been news reports on conflicts caused by it, such as noise pollution or use of a public square. This study collects 150 news articles published between May 2016 and May 2018 containing the keyword guangchangwu from the People's Daily, one of the most influential official newspapers owned by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. The purpose of the study is to investigate the government's attitudes towards square dancing through an analysis of the official media discourse, using word frequency of occurrence and multimodal discourse analysis. Both the word count and the co-deployment of visual and linguistic resources indicate that square dancing is perceived as an integral part of promoting the national fitness agenda. While the discourse demonstrates awareness of square dancing in the context of an aging society and a shortage of public space, general approval for it is still quite evident in the frequent positive descriptions in the text and presentations in the images. The use of the word dama 'big mama' in the official media discourse reveals gender inequality in contemporary China.

The social media have become an increasingly important vehicle for populist mobilization and persuasion. In this study, we explore how populism as a flexible ideology becomes articulated and reconstructed in times of international political turmoil. More precisely, we focus on the multimodal construction of right-wing populist ideology in the political memes produced by the Finns Party during Russia's war in Ukraine in the spring 2022. Our multimodal discourse analysis shows that the memes constructed national security and sovereignty, (gendered) anti-elitism, and anti-refugee arguments through drawing upon the 'Russian threat' as a central discursive resource. Further, it demonstrates how the specific features of internet memes – humour, entertainment, open-endedness and interactivity – can be creatively utilized in populist political communication. The results of this study have implications for the scholarly understanding of populism as a 'thin' and flexible ideology, and for internet memes as a channel for political persuasion and mobilization.