Styling transgression in political protest signage on a university campus in Hong Kong

The affordances based, critical multimodal discourse analysis considers who uses which specific semiotic resources, for whom, and for what purpose (Machin, 2016). In other words, rather than engage in a purely structural... [ view full abstract ]

The affordances based, critical multimodal discourse analysis considers who uses which specific semiotic resources, for whom, and for what purpose (Machin, 2016). In other words, rather than engage in a purely structural analysis of texts, it is necessary to combine content analysis and structural description with the analysis of culturally salient features (or forms) of different semiotic resources to ascertain how texts shape the way the world appears to us, or how discourse and power intersect (Foucault, 1979). This paper is concerned with the discursive construction of transgression in political protest signage on a university campus in Hong Kong. Drawing on Stallybrass and White (1986), I frame transgression as a process in which semiotic resources excluded from the normative discursive environment of a place are contingently and fleetingly (re-)appropriated in that place. This process momentarily but drastically inverts certain order(s) of discourse (Foucault, 1971) in that place, resulting in the emergence of a hybrid or multi-layered site of discourse. In this study, I examine how transgression is achieved through the deployment of specific stylistic features in three texts representing different genres of protest signage: a propaganda banner, a Chinese couplet (對聯/對句), and a collage of satirical posters. I suggest that in addition to certain lexico-grammatical features, each genre/text achieves its transgressive ‘force’ due to its stylistic design such as the use of Mainland (Communist) Chinese orthography (banner), Classical Chinese calligraphy (中國古代傳統書法) (couplet), and Hong Kong Cantonese vernacular (posters). I also analyze the realiztion of the transgressive potential of the three texts in terms of their apprent participation frameworks (Goffman, 1981), as well as their materiality and emplacement (Scollon and Scollon, 2003).