RSSCircus as Multimodal Discourse: Performance, Meaning, and Ritual
Dec 18
Title: Circus as Multimodal Discourse
Subtitle: Performance, Meaning, and Ritual
Publication Year: 2012
Publisher: Bloomsbury Linguistics (formerly Continuum Linguistics)
http://www.continuumbooks.com
Book URL: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/circus-as-multimodal-discourse-9781441125637/
Author: Paul Bouissac
Hardback: ISBN: 1441125639 9781441125637 Pages: 224 Price: U.K. £ 75.00
Abstract:
This volume presents a theory of the circus as a secular ritual and introduces
a method to analyze its performances as multimodal discourse.
The book’s fifteen chapters cover the range of circus specialties (magic,
domestic and wild animal training, acrobatics, and clowning) and provide
examples to show how cultural meaning is produced, extended and amplified by
circus performances. Bouissac is one of the world’s leading authorities on
circus ethnography and semiotics and this work is grounded on research
conducted over a 50 year span in Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas.
It concludes with a reflection on the potentially subversive power of this
discourse and its contemporary use by activists. Throughout, it endeavours to
develop an analytical approach that is mindful of the epistemological traps of
both positivism and postmodernist license. It brings semiotics and ethnography
to bear on the realm of the circus.
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