A discourse–design approach to multimodality: the visual communication of neoliberal management discourse

ABSTRACT

This paper takes a discourse–design approach to communication, providing a framework as to how this should be done. Design here is how individuals and institutions realize their interests in the world. We show how it is fruitful to link design more closely to the way discourse has been used in critical studies which draws attention to the motivated use of design, for thinking about design in terms of socio-political context. Due to their affordances, semiotic modes such as photography, graphics, layout, colour, numbers and writing will be deployed and co-articulated. The aim, using a discourse–design approach, is to show how we can best identify the very different affordances of such modes and how they rely on the principled design of a discourse. We illustrate this using examples from management documents at a university which draw on these different affordances in different ways to communicate the same discourse. Through this analysis we see how a neoliberal discourse based on a general design principle of coordination enters everyday practices and become very difficult to challenge.

KEYWORDS:

• Design
• visual communication
• multimodality
• discourse studies
• marketization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on Contributors

Per Ledin is Professor in Swedish at Sodertorn University Sweden. He has published widely in different areas of discourse studies, including writing development, multimodality and critical linguistics. His recent publications include papers on the assessment of writing tests and the semiotics of list and tables.

David Machin is Professor in Media and Communication at Orebro University Sweden. He has published widely in Critical Discourse Analysis and Multimodality. His recent publications include Visual Journalism (2015) and The Language of War Monuments (2013). He is co-editor of the journals Social Semiotics and Journal of Language and Politics.