Dynamic intersemiosis as a humour-enacting trigger in a tourist video

Abstract

This article seeks to explore the use of multiple semiotic resources in a multimodal text, namely a YouTube video on the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel in Amsterdam. More specifically, it observes how dynamic intersemiosis is adopted for humorous meaning-making and with an ultimate promotional function. First, it is here claimed that dynamic intersemiosis acts as the humour-enacting trigger enabling script shift, i.e. the semantic process of frame reversal inherent in humour generation. Then, multimodally expressed humour is discussed as performing a parody of similar tourism and eco-tourism texts and of the specialized language they adopt. The questions raised are: How do dynamic images and the soundscape combine in terms of congruence and dissonance? How does intersemiosis act as a humour-enacting trigger in the multimodal artefact? How does multimodally expressed humour position the Hans Brinker Hotel within a tourism discourse? How and why is the parody of promotional (eco)-tourism videos realized?

Keywords

dynamic intersemiosis humour multimodality parody tourism discourse video

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