Wendy L Bowcher
Biographic Data
| ID | 1679548 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Wendy L Bowcher |
| GIVEN NAMES | Wendy L |
| FAMILY NAME | Bowcher |
| SIGNATURE | BOWCHER W L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Sun Yat-sen University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7698-6169 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 77 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 24 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Toward a system of gesture–speech relations in elementary science teaching
Although previous research provides insights into how gestures function as a pedagogical tool, relatively little is known about how gesture is related to language, together creating a key meaning‐making teaching resource. Drawing on the system of logico–semantic relations in Systemic Functional Linguistic theory and McNeill's description of gestures, this study examines how gesture is logically and semantically related to the language teachers us…
Ways of questioning, ways of gesturing
Questions and gestures used in pedagogical contexts have each received considerable attention. However, rarely have studies focused on the relationship between questions and gestures and what this relationship may mean for pedagogical practice and the development of higher-level thinking. Drawing on previous research into the cognitive levels of questions and gestures, this study addresses this issue through focusing on the type of gestures used …
Traditional echoes, contemporary shifts
Sculpting the interpersonal
The underlying question of this article is ‘how do statues convey interpersonal meaning?’ To answer this question, the authors briefly critically examine the current social semiotic analytical framework for statues and develop a revised framework for analysing interpersonal meaning in which features from Kress and van Leeuwen’s Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (2006) and selected features from O’Toole’s framework from The Language of …
Context in Systemic Functional Linguistics
No abstract available
Context of situation and the role of language
‘Role’ is typically defined according to the part and/or function that something or someone contributes to a situation. This two-fold perspective is also inherent in discussions of the role of language: the ‘amount’ of language that is involved in a situation and the ‘function’ of language in a situation, with both perspectives relating to the non-linguistic systems that may be involved in the conduct of the situation relative to language. It is …
Pointing at words
Legitimating sex education through children’s picture books in China
This paper analyses two Chinese sex education picture books for children aged between 3 and 6 years of age using van Leeuwen’s legitimation framework, which identifies four types of legitimation strategies: authorization, moral evaluation, rationalisation and mythopoesis. Our findings suggest that personal authority tends to be vested in mothers as the conveyers of sex education to young children. Moral evaluation is realised through values such …
The semiotic sense of context vs the material sense of context
This paper investigates the relationship between culture and language through analyzing material and semiotic features in a context of language-in-use. The paper first discusses what is meant by ‘material’ and ‘semiotic’ context from an SFL perspective. It then investigates the way in which these two ‘senses’ of context may converge within a specific instance, affecting interaction in a subtle way and together construing a cultural phenomenon
Systemic functional linguistics in the digital age
Critical multimodal studies of popular discourse
Messages to new mothers
The mass media is replete with all kinds of advice, products and ideas about 'motherhood' with advertising being a major source of information on the latest products and consumer trends. Advertising is a key means of promoting ideas about infant feeding, and yet, there has been little in the way of critical analyses of breast pump advertisements in order to reveal the kinds of messages they convey about this method of feeding. This article makes …
Tracks in the Snowy Forest, Fishing and Hunting as Traditional Ways of Life
An exceptional career, a lasting legacy
Ruqaiya Hasan passed away on the 24th of June 2015 not long after complications arose following treatment for lung cancer. She had a remarkable career during which she played a major role in directing the trajectory of Systemic Functional Linguistic research
Multimodality and social semiosis
Issues in developing unified systems for contextual Field and Mode
‘Context of situation’ is a central concept in Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) theory, and recently there has been a renewed interest in modelling context and developing a set of features for the contextual parameters Field, Tenor, and Mode. Much of this work has been inspired by Hasan’s and Butt’s development of ‘contextualisation system networks’ (Butt 2004; Hasan 1999, 2009). However, a single comprehensive descriptive framework has still…
Representing Chairman Mao
This article presents an analysis of two entirely different statues of Chairman Mao: the first, a full figure statue completed in 1993, and the other, an immense bust completed in 2009. Both statues were sites included on a ‘Red Tour’ in which one of the authors participated in March 2011. It is assumed that the tour organizers consider both of the statues worthy of visiting, and of fulfilling the aims of a Red Tour. These aims, according to the …
Multimodal epistemologies
FundingThis article was supported by the Project of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ministry of Education, People's Republic of China [grant number 13YJAZH001].Wendy L. BowcherSun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, [email protected] WenGuangdong University of Finance, Guangzhou, [email protected]© 2014, Wendy L.
Multimodal Studies
This work was supported by the Project of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ministry of Education, People's Republic of China [Grant No. 13YJAZH001]
New Directions in the Analysis of Multimodal Discourse
Chinese tourist site entry tickets
This article explores how tourist site entry tickets multimodally construe a coherent message and how they are integrated into a grander ecosocial process. Primarily using Royce's intersemiotic complementarity framework we focus on the ideational meanings of an entry ticket to a famous site called the Juyong Pass along the Great Wall of China. Our analysis reveals two types of cohesion: the internal and the extended. As for internal cohesion, int…
Semiotic Margins
Semiotic Margins: Meaning in Multimodalities Shoshana Dreyfus, Susan Hood and Maree Stenglin (eds) London & New York: Continuum, 2011, vi + 275 pp. Reviewed by Wendy L. Bowcher, Sun Yat-sen Univers
The multimodal construal of the experiential domain of recipes in Japanese and Chinese
This paper presents an analysis of the multimodal construal of the semantic domain of culinary operations in Japanese and Chinese. The analysis uses the semantic domain framework developed by Halliday and Matthiessen (1999) and the system of logico-semantic relations between image and text developed by Martinec and Salway (2005). The data consist of multimodal recipes for Chinese dumplings in both Japanese and Chinese with occasional reference to…
Dealing with death in an educational context
While empirical investigations and the development of theories for studying intercultural communication are important for developing our understanding of what happens when people of diverse backgrounds come together, equally important are records of specific instances of contact as these provide opportunities to reflect on what we know; to validate or question theories; to critically consider the decisions made by those involved as well as the ki…
New Directions in the Analysis of Multimodal Discourse
Chinese tourist site entry tickets
This article explores how tourist site entry tickets multimodally construe a coherent message and how they are integrated into a grander ecosocial process. Primarily using Royce's intersemiotic complementarity framework we focus on the ideational meanings of an entry ticket to a famous site called the Juyong Pass along the Great Wall of China. Our analysis reveals two types of cohesion: the internal and the extended. As for internal cohesion, int…
Representing Chairman Mao
This article presents an analysis of two entirely different statues of Chairman Mao: the first, a full figure statue completed in 1993, and the other, an immense bust completed in 2009. Both statues were sites included on a ‘Red Tour’ in which one of the authors participated in March 2011. It is assumed that the tour organizers consider both of the statues worthy of visiting, and of fulfilling the aims of a Red Tour. These aims, according to the …
Ways of questioning, ways of gesturing
Questions and gestures used in pedagogical contexts have each received considerable attention. However, rarely have studies focused on the relationship between questions and gestures and what this relationship may mean for pedagogical practice and the development of higher-level thinking. Drawing on previous research into the cognitive levels of questions and gestures, this study addresses this issue through focusing on the type of gestures used …
Systemic functional linguistics in the digital age
Multimodal Studies
This work was supported by the Project of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ministry of Education, People's Republic of China [Grant No. 13YJAZH001]
Dealing with death in an educational context
While empirical investigations and the development of theories for studying intercultural communication are important for developing our understanding of what happens when people of diverse backgrounds come together, equally important are records of specific instances of contact as these provide opportunities to reflect on what we know; to validate or question theories; to critically consider the decisions made by those involved as well as the ki…
New Directions in the Analysis of Multimodal Discourse
Chinese tourist site entry tickets
This article explores how tourist site entry tickets multimodally construe a coherent message and how they are integrated into a grander ecosocial process. Primarily using Royce's intersemiotic complementarity framework we focus on the ideational meanings of an entry ticket to a famous site called the Juyong Pass along the Great Wall of China. Our analysis reveals two types of cohesion: the internal and the extended. As for internal cohesion, int…
Semiotic Margins
Semiotic Margins: Meaning in Multimodalities Shoshana Dreyfus, Susan Hood and Maree Stenglin (eds) London & New York: Continuum, 2011, vi + 275 pp. Reviewed by Wendy L. Bowcher, Sun Yat-sen Univers
The multimodal construal of the experiential domain of recipes in Japanese and Chinese
This paper presents an analysis of the multimodal construal of the semantic domain of culinary operations in Japanese and Chinese. The analysis uses the semantic domain framework developed by Halliday and Matthiessen (1999) and the system of logico-semantic relations between image and text developed by Martinec and Salway (2005). The data consist of multimodal recipes for Chinese dumplings in both Japanese and Chinese with occasional reference to…
Issues in developing unified systems for contextual Field and Mode
‘Context of situation’ is a central concept in Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) theory, and recently there has been a renewed interest in modelling context and developing a set of features for the contextual parameters Field, Tenor, and Mode. Much of this work has been inspired by Hasan’s and Butt’s development of ‘contextualisation system networks’ (Butt 2004; Hasan 1999, 2009). However, a single comprehensive descriptive framework has still…
Representing Chairman Mao
This article presents an analysis of two entirely different statues of Chairman Mao: the first, a full figure statue completed in 1993, and the other, an immense bust completed in 2009. Both statues were sites included on a ‘Red Tour’ in which one of the authors participated in March 2011. It is assumed that the tour organizers consider both of the statues worthy of visiting, and of fulfilling the aims of a Red Tour. These aims, according to the …
Multimodal epistemologies
FundingThis article was supported by the Project of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ministry of Education, People's Republic of China [grant number 13YJAZH001].Wendy L. BowcherSun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, [email protected] WenGuangdong University of Finance, Guangzhou, [email protected]© 2014, Wendy L.
Multimodal Studies
This work was supported by the Project of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ministry of Education, People's Republic of China [Grant No. 13YJAZH001]
An exceptional career, a lasting legacy
Ruqaiya Hasan passed away on the 24th of June 2015 not long after complications arose following treatment for lung cancer. She had a remarkable career during which she played a major role in directing the trajectory of Systemic Functional Linguistic research
Multimodality and social semiosis
Messages to new mothers
The mass media is replete with all kinds of advice, products and ideas about 'motherhood' with advertising being a major source of information on the latest products and consumer trends. Advertising is a key means of promoting ideas about infant feeding, and yet, there has been little in the way of critical analyses of breast pump advertisements in order to reveal the kinds of messages they convey about this method of feeding. This article makes …
Tracks in the Snowy Forest, Fishing and Hunting as Traditional Ways of Life
Critical multimodal studies of popular discourse
The semiotic sense of context vs the material sense of context
This paper investigates the relationship between culture and language through analyzing material and semiotic features in a context of language-in-use. The paper first discusses what is meant by ‘material’ and ‘semiotic’ context from an SFL perspective. It then investigates the way in which these two ‘senses’ of context may converge within a specific instance, affecting interaction in a subtle way and together construing a cultural phenomenon
Systemic functional linguistics in the digital age
Legitimating sex education through children’s picture books in China
This paper analyses two Chinese sex education picture books for children aged between 3 and 6 years of age using van Leeuwen’s legitimation framework, which identifies four types of legitimation strategies: authorization, moral evaluation, rationalisation and mythopoesis. Our findings suggest that personal authority tends to be vested in mothers as the conveyers of sex education to young children. Moral evaluation is realised through values such …
Pointing at words
Context in Systemic Functional Linguistics
No abstract available
Context of situation and the role of language
‘Role’ is typically defined according to the part and/or function that something or someone contributes to a situation. This two-fold perspective is also inherent in discussions of the role of language: the ‘amount’ of language that is involved in a situation and the ‘function’ of language in a situation, with both perspectives relating to the non-linguistic systems that may be involved in the conduct of the situation relative to language. It is …
Sculpting the interpersonal
The underlying question of this article is ‘how do statues convey interpersonal meaning?’ To answer this question, the authors briefly critically examine the current social semiotic analytical framework for statues and develop a revised framework for analysing interpersonal meaning in which features from Kress and van Leeuwen’s Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (2006) and selected features from O’Toole’s framework from The Language of …
Traditional echoes, contemporary shifts
Toward a system of gesture–speech relations in elementary science teaching
Although previous research provides insights into how gestures function as a pedagogical tool, relatively little is known about how gesture is related to language, together creating a key meaning‐making teaching resource. Drawing on the system of logico–semantic relations in Systemic Functional Linguistic theory and McNeill's description of gestures, this study examines how gesture is logically and semantically related to the language teachers us…
Ways of questioning, ways of gesturing
Questions and gestures used in pedagogical contexts have each received considerable attention. However, rarely have studies focused on the relationship between questions and gestures and what this relationship may mean for pedagogical practice and the development of higher-level thinking. Drawing on previous research into the cognitive levels of questions and gestures, this study addresses this issue through focusing on the type of gestures used …
Linguistics (15 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies (14 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (12 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · History (7 works)