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It is generally agreed that in photojournalism pictures come first. However, also the short verbal texts that accompany them play a crucial role, as they lead readers among the different signifieds of the image. A multimodal discourse analysis of captions will aptly consider both the linguistic elements that appear within the verbal discourse and the image-text relation. The interconnectedness of captions and pictures has lately been defined as a “loop,” a view which blurs the traditional distinction between anchoring and relaying processes theorized by Barthes. The association of the relaying function with comics, however, seems to establish an interesting point of contact between photojournalism and pop art. Captions actually show the tension between “high” and “low” culture, the former being traditionally identified with the word and the latter with the image. While in the heyday of photojournalism captions were made necessary by the poor quality of the photographs, they soon began to provide an abstractive summary of the story told by the picture. This selective process involves interpretation. For this reason, captions can be ethically misleading and even legally controversial forms of discourse, for instance when they are used instrumentally to convey a specific point of view. In photojournalism dealing with crime cases, in particular, captions may display a sensationalist and populist view of justice, thus articulating the thoughts of public opinion supported by the newspaper’s stand. My case study focuses on the caption that accompanied the photo portraying Perry Smith and Richard Hickock while leaving the courtroom on March 29, 1960. The two murderers – who have become famous after the publication of the documentary novel In Cold Blood– had just been sentenced to death by hanging. As reported by Capote, the caption that appeared in the Kansas newspaper read “The Last Laugh?” Starting from this case, the present work will try to investigate the complexity of captions as multimodal forms of discourse.

This essay aims to provide a dual reading of Flann O’Brien’s novel The Third Policeman: a literary one, centred on the multifarious references to famous works by authors such as Sterne, Gide, Dostoevsky and Kafka, and a linguistic one, in which the intertextual game is sought in the language of legal texts, particularly those belonging to the Irish tradition. While Patrizia Nerozzi explores the interplay with literary genres, motifs and narrative patterns, Mara Logaldo’s analysis identifies wordplays and other recurring rhetorical strategies, focusing on the typical traits of Irish and Legal English. Both studies concentrate on the parody of law that permeates the text: while the literary reading highlights the complex declinations of nonsense within this novel vis-à-vis other literary texts, the linguistic analysis shows to what extent Flann O’Brien exploits the idiosyncrasies of legal language to build up, with words, his architecture of absurdity, his fable of law.

Augmented Reality (AR) is increasingly changing our perception of the world. The spreading of Quick Response (QR), Radio Frequency (RFID) and AR tags has provided ways to enrich physical items with digital information. By a process of alignment the codes can be read by the cameras contained in handheld devices or special equipment and add computer-generated contents – including 3-D imagery – to real objects in real time. As a result, we feel we belong to a multi-layered dimension, to a mixed environment where the real and the virtual partly overlap. Fashion has been among the most responsive domains to this new technology. Applications of AR in the field have already been numerous and diverse: from Magic Mirrors in department stores to 3-D features in fashion magazines; from augmented fashion shows, where models are covered with tags or transformed into walking holograms, to advertisements consisting exclusively of more or less magnified QR codes. Bodies are thus at the same time augmented and encrypted, offered to the eye of the digital camera to be transfigured and turned into a secret language which, among other functions, can also have that of becoming a powerful tool to bypass censorship.

The core subject of The King’s Speech (Tom Hooper, 2010) is the relation between voice and power. In the first place, we have the speech impediment of the Duke of York (the future George VI) and his subsequent inability to deliver effectual messages to the nation in a particularly dramatic phase in history. This failure highlights, by contrast, the identification of monarchy with voice. The film actually shows how the performative power of speech became crucial after the invention of the wireless. The BBC, as George V stated on his death bed, had turned kings into actors: elocution could either make or unmake them. Yet, these are only some facets of the complex dynamics by which language and power are interrelated in the film. Another important issue is the form of verbal exchange between doctor and patient, which enacts a wavering between two kinds of authority, the one possessed by right (legitimate power) and the one acquired by study and experience (expert power). Emphasis is also placed on standard English as the language traditionally associated with higher education, political supremacy and prestige. The importance given to Received Pronunciation and the contempt shown towards other language variants proves how deeply embedded in language power is. Though amiably, even the ironic remarks on conversational rules made by Elizabeth, the future Queen Mother, finally confirm the status quo, putting things and people back into place on the social scale. This is also, ultimately, the policy of the BBC, the institution that has been invested with the task of preserving, at the same time, British national identity and the purity of the English language.