Remaking Meaning Across Modes: Marginality and Transduction in the Verbal and Visual Construction of Migration

Abstract

This paper considers the linguistic and multimodal strategies adopted to describe the theme of migration in both textual and visual representations, by drawing on the theoretical notion of transduction (Kress 2010). The transition from one semiotic mode to another is analyzed with reference to the representation of mass migrations in J. Conrad’s short story “Amy Foster” and J. Lawrence’s The Migration Series, in order to shed light on the meaning-making process emerging from this modal shift. The combination of linguistic and visual structures in specific socio-historical contexts makes the “transmodal redesign” (Mavers 2011) a semiotic relocation in which the past travels into the present. However, the shift is not only temporal; the reshaping of meaning also arises in a space made up of multiple semiotic intersections, appropriations, and entanglements (Newfield 2014) which generate, in turn, new meanings. As a consequence, the transmodal moment becomes itself a moment of cross-over, an in-between, so that the discourse on marginality does not only refer to the crossing of geographical boundaries or to the individual dislocation experienced by the migrant, but also concerns textual, multimodal, and semiotic transitions.