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Switching Semiotic Styles: The Metachoices of Pandemic Communication book cover

1st Edition

Switching Semiotic Styles The Metachoices of Pandemic Communication

By Simon Smith Copyright 2027
264 Pages 32 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book argues that a reflexive awareness of our semiotic style, our grasp on the world as it rolls over, can be empowering when our normal ways of going on come unstuck, opening up choices that are more event-shaping than we realise. Stylistic orientations enact metachoices: choices that set the criteria for subsequent ones, setting up a cascade of conditioned, but not wholly determined,... Read more

1. Introduction, 2. Recognising emergencies and switching styles: metachoices in social studies of illness and legal studies of emergency governance, 3. Presentification: directing situations by making distant things present and making one's presence felt, 4. Perceiving events through music: listening, reduced listening, listening-responding, 5. Narrative and musical semioses, 6. Going on during and moving on after: arranging ongoingness in a transient genre of advice-giving, 7. Setting and unsettling an emergency tempo: legal discourse and the sequencing of pandemic metachoices, 8. Coorientation around repetition and closure: how vaccination campaign ads arranged ongoing events, 9. So, the world rolls over otherwise, Glossary, References, Appendices, Index

Biography

Simon Smith works at the Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. He is also attached to the Systemic Risk Institute (https://www.syri.institute). His work straddles communication studies, semiotics and sociology.

"Witty, daring, and profoundly original, Switching Semiotic Styles invites readers to rethink how metachoices are made in times of crisis. Its modular chapters, each with a distinctive voice, compose a vibrant counterpoint where narratives and music intertwine, reorienting our understanding of communication, choice and style amid uncertainty."

- François Cooren, Professor in communication studies, Université de Montréal

"Simon Smith is the first English-speaking scholar I’ve ever met who understands French semiotics, its philosophical background and cultural potentialities. Switching Semiotic Styles should be read by any anglophone social scientist in search of intellectual renewal."

- Eric Landowski, Senior researcher in semiotics, CNRS Paris, editor-in-chief of Acta

"Switching Semiotic Styles proposes a theoretically innovative framework that integrates musical concepts into the analysis of multimodal media discourse. Smith's bold and imaginative approach provides a captivating investigation of temporality, musicality, textuality, and narrativity, revealing how subtle yet powerful phenomena that escape traditional discourse analysis resonate deeply in daily interactions."

- Petr Kaderka, Czech Language Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences

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