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Munday (2001/2008: 15) notes that the relationship between research in translation and other disciplines is not fixed but is contingent to the aims of the researcher. The choice of theories and methodologies is thus a crucial one. As the focus of TS has shifted from words to texts, from texts to socio-cultural context, to encompass the working practices and ‘habitus’ of the translators themselves (Simeoni 1999;

Inghilleri 2003, 2005; Koskinen 2006, 2008), methodologies have become

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increasingly sophisticated reflecting the changing nature of conceptions of translation and translators and their roles in our world today.

This research project attempts a three-fold approach to observe the phenomenon of translation from three perspectives; translation in hybrid texts (Schäffner and Adab 2001), the translator in her/his habitus, and reception of the product within target culture. Consequently, the methodology for this project is configured around three main approaches;

 A multisemiotic approach to Critical Discourse Analysis;

 Ethnographic methods of qualitative interviews;

 A preliminary attempt to survey and analyse reader response.

These three approaches correspond to different aspects of the research questions.

The first, multimodel CDA (van Dijk 2009; Iedema 2003) forms the methodological hub and the necessary tools with which to examine the main source of data, online newspaper articles. Munday’s (2012) adaptation of appraisal theory (Martin and White 2005) provides the framework for analysis of the ‘critical points’ in translator decision-making (see section 1.6). This overarching analytical frame can be further broken down into three components that cover the three textual features under examination; 1. text in the target language, 2. embedded translated text, and 3.

intersemiotic features such as images and graphics. The analysis of textual data, i.e., the newspaper articles is supported by a sample study of qualitative interviews with Italian correspondents for the major British quality and popular dailies.

Practitioners in the field, they are also the ‘journalists who translate’ and who have put their by-lines to many of the articles analysed in this study. The third element is a sample survey of reader response. Reader’s comments at the end of online articles and blogs related to the news narratives discussed are collated and monitored in order to try and build a picture of readers’ reactions and perceptions. This survey that proposes to use readers’ comments as data for qualitative analysis takes inspirations from sociological studies where they are considered ‘a legitimate data source and basis for investigation for sociologists of popular culture’ (Poulton and

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Durell 2014: 7). This trilateral view has evolved from the tried and tested multidisciplinary methodology elaborated during MA research and subsequent publications (Filmer 2011, 2012, 2013). The following sections discuss the reasons for adopting these particular approaches here and explain the function of each of these facets within the research framework.

Critical Discourse Analysis revisited through a multi-1.3

semiotic view

Mannheim’s plea for interdisciplinarity by any other name is reflected in the ethos of (Critical) Discourse Studies (see section 2.2-2.3). Based on concepts and tools deriving from Hallidayan linguistics, over the last forty years CDA has developed into an area of research that spans the social sciences and the humanities alike (Fairclough 2001:121; van Dijk 2007; Wodak 2008: 2 see section 2.2) incorporating both method and theoretical stance. The aim of CDA is to make connections between the use of language and society thus revealing how discourse is instrumental to maintaining existing power relations. Teun A. van Dijk (2007: 354) was one of the first theorists to develop the CDA paradigm along with Ruth Wodak, Norman Fairclough, Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen. He defines the field of study thus:

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context.

With such dissident research, critical discourse analysts take explicit position, and thus want to understand, expose, and ultimately resist social inequality.

Van Dijk (2001: 97) also emphasises the incumbent ‘scholarly and social responsibilities’ intrinsic to a Discourse Studies approach, asserting that ‘its multidisciplinary theories must account for the complexities of the relationships between discourse structures and social structures’ (ibid). It is no coincidence, then, according to van Dijk (2009: 193), that scholarly interest in the closely linked CDA, ideology, and the media converged at more or less the same time in Bell’s seminal work, The Language of News Media (1991) (see section 4.4). Fowler’s Language in the

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News (1991) elaborated similar ideas with Critical Linguistics (Fowler et al. 1979;

Kress and Hodge 1979) laying the structural foundation for later models of CDA.

Wodak (2008: 3) on the other hand sustains that the object of study does not necessarily have to be linked to an exceptionally ‘serious’ social or political experiences or events: ‘Any social phenomenon lends itself to critical investigation, to be challenged and not taken for granted’. Thus the purpose of CDA is to account for what can broadly be defined as ‘social phenomenon’ observed through the lens of language, or what van Dijk refers to as text (in the sense of written words) and talk (in the sense of speech). Within these general linguistic parameters he identifies lexicon as the greatest repository of ideological expression (1998: 205):

Lexical analysis is […] the most obvious (and fruitful) component in ideological discourse analysis. Simply spelling out all the implications of the words being used in a specific discourse and context often provides an array of ideological meanings. As a practical method, substitution of one word by others immediately shows different semantic and often ideological ‘effects’ of such a substitution (Italics added).

This deceptively simple approach to semantics has been a useful tool in analysing data for this research proving to be an invaluable aid in understanding translational choices and their effects. As highlighted here in italics, however, the lexical item in itself has no intrinsic value if not contextualised, which is where Halliday’s concept of Language as social semiotic (1978) comes into play, that is, ‘how people use language with each other in accomplishing everyday social life’ (Eggins 2004: 3).

Context intended in a broader sense, i.e., socio-political context, is what Reisigl and Wodak (2001) refer to in their brand of discourse analysis known as the discourse-historical approach. Their methodology brings to light the importance of historical contextualisation of the discourse under discussion and the need for ethnographical analysis to underpin research findings. This approach has been integrated here with other models of CDA because for the purposes of this research it was deemed essential to understand sociolinguistic origins of Berlusconi’s use of language and not present his discourse as anomalous within its own context.

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While language in use is the pivotal focus of CDA, van Dijk (1998: 205) was one of the first to recognise that the scope of discourse has moved beyond linguistic analysis alone to encompass non-verbal aspects such as voice prosody and gesture as well as other semiotic dimensions such as sound, film, image, and graphics:

‘discourse is now understood as a complex multimodal event of interaction and communication’ (van Dijk 2009: 192). With particular reference to newspapers he has observed the importance of graphics and visual layout as further meaning making structures:

Little theory is necessary to understand that variations of graphic prominence may constitute a crucial element in the expression of ideologies. Whether a news report appears on the front page or on an inside page of the newspaper, high on the page or at the bottom, left or right, or whether it has a small or a banner headline, […]

with or without a photograph, tables, drawings, colour and so on, are all properties of the graphical representation of just one genre that may have a serious impact on the readers’ interpretation of the relevance or newsworthiness of news events (1998:

201)

With this consideration in mind the following section offers a brief overview of Kress’s social semiotic view of multimodality and its relation to the present study.

1.3.1 The multimodality of news texts

The rise in popularity of online newspapers raises questions on the multimodal character of news hypertexts and the interplay of different semiotic resources in the meaning making process (Conboy 2010: 148). The layout and presentation of information online is considerably different to traditional paper forms, juxtaposing image, video, and text. A plethora of links to related articles, audiovisuals, and a prodigious number of photographs with longer captions create a multisemiotic experience. The news article in question is often embedded in a paratext that foregrounds a communicative aim, even subliminally encoding an ideological slant.

Iedema (2003: 33) points out this ‘ increased ubiquity of sound image, film, through TV, the computer and the internet is undoubtedly behind this new emphasis on and interest in the multi-semiotic complexity of representations we produce and see

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around us’. He explains this is the reason why discourse analysis needs to extend towards a multi-semiotic practice because humans are predisposed towards multimodal meaning making and ‘as our own multi-semiotic ontogenesis requires attention to more than one semiotic, the linguistic code’ (ibid.). This notion was posited in Hodge and Kress’s Social Semiotics back in 1988 before the era of online newspapers. It should also be noted that Roland Barthes was conducting forms of multi-semiotic analysis as long ago as 1957 (Mythologies). Nevertheless, the notion is significant in creating news texts of today where more than one semiotic system is afoot in creating representations of reality.

According to Kress (2010: 27), ‘Makers of representations are shapers of knowledge’. From the multimodal lens, knowledge is produced rather than acquired, and is a process in which the individual receiver of information participates in order to make meaning. In other words, the signs need interpretation and communication takes place when there is a two-way flow. From this perspective, Kress (2010: 59) argues for a ‘social semiotic multimodal account of meaning’ in contemporary communication. Like CDA, social semiotic multimodality is based on Hallidayan (1978; 1984) systemic functional linguistics (SFL see section 1.4.3) according to which language not only represents but actively constructs our worldview: meaning making is negotiated in a social context where choice plays a fundamental role in the construction of meaning. In the multimodal paradigm the emphasis is on agency and motivation in those choices, read in a semiotic rather than linguistic key. Kress (2010: 59) postulates that in a multimodal text:

All signs in all modes are meaningful. Thus we can no longer separate and isolate the various ‘modes’, or meaning making resources that a text contains such as writing, image, colour, proximity, number and facial expression; all have meaning potential and a function in the meaning making process’.

The theory of social semiotics, according to Kress, is able to give an account of each of these modes and their interrelation in any one text because multimodal semiotics deals with entities in which meaning and form appear as an integrated whole, a

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sign. This is significant when considering the multimodal, multimedia texts of online newspapers.

Contemporary society has witnessed radical change within the field of communications regarding the ways in which the dissemination and distribution of messages and meanings occur (Castells 2010). Kress (2010: 6) draws attention to the ways in which semiotic effects are visible in this change. On the one hand, ‘semiotic production’ is evident in the shift from older technologies to digital and electronic printing methods, while on the other hand, a shift in ‘representation’ has taken place from the mode of writing to the mode of image. Indeed, from a multimodal perspective, language must be perceived in a different light: ‘no longer as central and dominant, fully capable of expressing all meanings, but as one means among others for making meaning, each of them specific (Kress 2010: 79). A profound reorientation from the traditional stance of word over image, this is the route taken by social semiotic approaches to multimodal representation. An interesting aspect of the social semiotic project is its ethical approach to communication. One of its aims is to raise levels of social consciousness to the effects of semiotic actions performed by one social group on another (ibid).

Kress, therefore, sees the written code as a relatively small part of the overarching multimodal structure of a message. Clearly this must depend on the type of ‘message’ being conveyed; one needs to distinguish between different text genres. The reason for highlighting Kress’s work here is not necessarily to subscribe wholesale to his theory, or to ‘adapt’ it for the purposes of this analysis. As he points out, linguistic frames of analysis cannot be applied to multimodal texts.

Multimodality does, however, push the envelope on conceptions of what constitutes a text and the ways in which that text can be interpreted. It also advances the important notion of increasing public awareness as to how multimodal messages can be read. Finally it broaches issues of agency in the creation of multimodal meaning making, which is most relevant to the questions this research aims to address. Online news texts are sophisticated, multisemiotic messages that require scrutiny above and below text level in order to unpack their

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multifarious meanings. This section, then, has drawn attention to one of the methodological drawbacks of relying purely on textual analysis when dealing with multimodal texts. The following section moves on to discuss other points of view as to the inadequacy of CDA alone as a method of analysis.

1.3.2 Limitations of Critical Discourse Analysis from a methodological point of