Video, Politics, and Applied Semiotics: Constructing Meaning from Broadcast News

This paper examines the relationship between verbal and visual semiotic cues by analyzing how semiotic cues position speakers interactionally and communicate implicit evaluative messages in one television news story. The paper summarizes an analysis of this news story that my collaborator and I have done based solely on verbal cues (Wortham & Locher, 1996). Then the paper analyzes the visual cues that accompany this television news report. The research question is: Do the visual cues contribute to the interactional positioning accomplished by the verbal cues? The analysis shows that visual cues in this case both reinforce the interactional positioning that gets done by verbal cues and create a pattern of interactional positioning that is independent of the verbal cues.