In:Media as Procedures of Communication
Edited by Martin Luginbühl and Jan Georg Schneider
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 348] 2024
► pp. 158–187
Chapter 7Media as processes of doing and perceiving
How a yoga pose in an online tutorial takes on meaning as felt sensation
Published online: 21 November 2024
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.348.07lad
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.348.07lad
Abstract
The paper puts forward an integrated perspective on how meaning emerges in communicative media
contexts. We bring together linguistics and film studies to show how semiotic resources interact with their situated
media context. To ground our conceptual argument, we bring into dialogue Jan-Georg Schneider’s processual
understanding of media as procedures with Sybille Krämer’s media-philosophical view on media and Helmuth Plessner’s
philosophical anthropological thinking of human behavior. Using the example of a yoga tutorial that teaches the
cross-legged seat, we illustrate that the bodily experiences which are central to adopting the pose are mediated
through the interplay of multimodal metaphors and the qualitatively felt staging of the video. As a result, media turn
out as processes in which deliberate meaning-making and non-discursive sense-making go hand in hand.
Article outline
- 1.The temporal dimension of media
- 2.Mediality as mode of experience and surplus of sense
- 3.Analysis: The cross-legged seat as a complex interaction of physical stability and flexibility
- 3.1Data
- 3.2Method
- 3.3Audio-visual staging of stability, centering and balance
- 3.4Teaching embodied knowledge
- 3.4.1Stretching and curvature of the spine
- 3.4.2Firm base and flexible spine
- 3.4.3Stable column and flexible lightness
- 3.4.4Interplay of audiovisual staging and multimodal constitution of meaning
- 4.Conclusion
Notes References
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