Stylistic Analysis Of Plot And Characterization In Chapter 3 Of Book 2 – O'Halloran, K. (2006)

Stylistic Analysis Of Plot And Characterization In Chapter 3 Of Book 2 – O'Halloran, K. (2006)

Abstract 

In three sections of Multimodal Discourse Analysis: Systemic Functional Perspectives. Continuum, by O'Halloran, the book details an in-depth exploration of various texts and discourses from a multimodal systematic functional perspective. Each chapter contains different texts that can be linked to the social and cultural organization of itself to the world. The author uses data from the national university of Singapore about multimodal research of colleges. The data was influenced by the theoretical work of Michael O’Toole hence enlightening the readers on how multimodality is developed differently within different contexts.  The first section is about here – dimensional materials and objects in space; the second one tackles electronic media, and the third and final section is about print media. The book offers a great example of how linguistic tools and practices, when adjusted in order to be used in a multimodal context, can be of greater use.   On the other hand, the book also exposes the challenges of reshaping linguistic tools. This article explores a stylistic analysis of the semiotic study of Singapore's Orchard Road and the Marriott Hotel by Safeyaton Alias to expound more about the physical installation of economic and political discourses that have shaped Singapore as a city showing how this has shaped back in how the city is build and structure. 

Keywords: Stylistic Analysis 

Introduction. 

The word style is a Latin word that refers to a method that refers to the methods by which the writer utilizes means of language, selection of words, order of sentences, and use of writing devices. One's writing style can be used as one density through which one communicates their feelings and personality to the audience. An individual's writing style can be used as a fingerprint where one can guess the author of an article through their writing style.   In multimodal discourse analysis, the book weighs in on new methodological routes that can be used to research multimodality. Ledema (2003) notes that the term multimodality was phased in to emphasize the advantages of considering semiotics, such as image and gesture, other than the language in use.  Apart from printing which has been used to display language, also images and sounds can be used to represent languages. To fully make use of multiple semiotic resources, the author adapts Hallidays' (1994) systematic functional(S.F.) theory which helps to expound on non-linguistic semantic resources(Sidiropoulou, 2006).  Early linguistics notes that human meaning revolves in more than written language and can also be found in the life signs within the society. 

In chapter three of the book(semiotic study of Singapore's Orchard Road and the Marriott Hotel by Safeyaton Alias). Alias tries to push the limits of the S.F. theory to propose a grammar of architecture that helps to map out systems of choices that architecture makes when constructing a building in a given social, cultural, and political context. Alias notes that Singapore City reflects the people actions Party (PAP), a political party that has been ruling since the county gained independence in 1965(O'Halloran, 2004). Alley gives the city's economic state by pointing out that it is deficient in natural resources and has to rely fully on its human resources. However, despite the challenges, Singapore has emerged to be one of the most economical cities in Asia, characterized by high living standards. Orchard Road prides itself on many buildings and shops that represent Singapore's culture, ideologies, and community functions. It's from Orchard Road the Marriot Hotel is located. To analyze the city architecture, the author uses Michael Hillidays' social semiotic theory of language that deals with visual image and architecture. 

Orchard Road is synonymous with shopping; the city was designed from mid 1960ts to mid 1990ts to specifically become Singapore's main street city. Alias echoes the latter noting that the physical features of Orchard Road have not been permanent. They have evolved while aiming to transform the city to catch up with modernization and technological revolutions in efforts to make it a modern city characterized by attractiveness, accessibility, and business-friendly (56). However, in efforts to achieve its objectives, the city also has to meet the needs of the individual in terms of housing, hygiene, and affordability.    Orchard Road is 2.4 kilometers, which echoes its objectives (URA Annual Report 1998/1999) since it is a guilty shopping street within the rising tide of global consumerism. It offers a new shopping typology that makes the city unique in Asia. However, in its architecture, the city echoes layered histories that entail post-traditional urbanism. (Hee, 2005). 

The Orchard Road was designed for shopping; this is a result of how social interactions take place. During the evolution of the road in the 1980ts, Dynasty Hornet (currently Marriot) was built, and the podium floors, including Tanga Plaza, were built, replacing the C.K Tang building,  by 1990ts the road had already generated as busy, comprising entertaining and shopping streets, which were high-end (Hee, 2005). In the twentieth century, the city has many malls and standardized business buildings that define the city through video walls and bright lights that make the city become synonymous with shopping icons due to urban renewal. The city is designed so that there is ample parking space, and it s easily accessible to the public elements, making it a tourist attraction center. It is a city that offers consumption; the city is characterized by large crowds of individuals from different backgrounds who exercise autonomous choices about whether or what to consume. Alias uses architectural elements in terms of rooms, floors, and buildings to define Orchard City and how in the modern world can serve individuals to become a tourist attraction center.  

The" social semiotics "by Halliday (1987) is also used to describe how people socialize and how they communicate to produce communicative artifacts and events and interpret them.( O’Halloran & Fei 2014). The shopping and cultural behavior in the city provides a systemic analysis where the city was generated to constitute social interactions and practices that represent the city. Orchard Road has transitioned from a colonial society to a modern capitalist one.  The open spaces have benches which are made to lead order to socially engineer individuals into new habits such as walking instead of driving to exercise. Orchard Road is characterized by strategically located benches to help the interaction of different individuals and tourists visiting Singapore. 

The city reflects the ideologies that operate within the society. The Orchard Road seems to manifest Archigrams idea of democratic consumption. Archigrams was a British architectural group that, through media-savvy provocations and unbuilt projects, created the most influential architectural movements in the 1960ts. Orchard Road echoes Archigram idea of democratic consumption, where every individual is autonomous due to their ability to consume. However, the social classes present in the society do affect the democracy hence exposing the city's main weakness that can be traced back to the laws present in the Archigrams Utopian ideal. Despite the flaws, the living city ideas are manifested in Orchard City. Archigram proposed the idea of a living city that was characterized by social, political, and economic liberalism and a free-market economy where consumers had a choice to choose what they consume hence creating a consumer democracy city. Archigram ethos towards consumption are elements that can be seen in the architecture and cannot be found in literacy texts. The architecture of Orchard Road creates social and economic inequality exhibited in various malls and shops while maintaining their status as sites for consumption. The city is characterized by spending power that only individuals from the high society can reach. The architecture itself ends up as a written file for tourist attraction because of how the city is organized to high end attract tourists, however indirectly causing social stratification of the haves and haves not in the city. 

Orchard City is structurally organized and left for interpretation through visual, historical power structures. The city is like art that cannot be represented on a printed page and only can be explained through a multimodal analysis. The Wisma Atria complex has been existing since its construction in 1984 by the D.P. architects; however, the same building was altered two decades later by the same architects, giving it a six-story orthogonal urban veranda that individuals can use to access the third floor. Graphically, Singapore City has evolved to incorporate billboards and suspended glass canopies which were an integral part of the Singapore tourist board(Anderson 2012). The city is designed to accommodate civil through creating a pedestrian streetscape that helps the social elements in the city. The fact that the city can accommodate up-to-date architecture and, at the same time, pedestrian patterns is what makes Orchard Road one of the healthiest and most sustainable cities in Asia. Alias uses verbs to describe how Singapore city is evolving; words like "grows" and "reinvents" already help the readers to visualize Singapore's objective of becoming a "model city."  

Alias takes note of visual structures across Singapore city to point out different interpretations of experience and social interaction( Hermawan, 2011).  Singapore's objective was to create a utopian city, a model city that attracts individuals from different cultures, religions, and races. The Orchard Road was designed to make their citizens experience the good life and "life and character" to make them more exciting and livelier. As a result, the hotels are designed to provide luxury and bring additional income to the city. Marriot Hotel s strategically located at the junction between Scotts Road and Orchard Road next to Scotts Square and Lucky Plaza shopping complexes. The Marriot cafeteria is known for international buffet meals; the guest can even book a table session in the heart of the kitchen. The author uses observable elements to describe the geographical location of the Marriot café (Ravelli & McMurtrie, 2015). the hotel is two miles from the business district and the Singapore International Convention and exhibition center. Marriott consistently reinvents its services to meet and surpass the guests' expectations in Singapore. The strategic location of the Marriot café boosts tourism in Singapore. The interior design and décor aim at giving the customers a homely place in a foreign country, as they can see how individuals walk in the street. Its closeness to the exhibition centers and international conventions proves that it was shaped by the semiotic spaces in which they take place, giving tourists and business people systematic options for choosing it when visiting Singapore. The partial discourse helps the Alias to analyze the built environment and how they must meet the needs of diverse populations where it needs to adapt to social and economic changes. 

The framework of the Orchard Road and   Marriot café helps s to relate the semiotics architecture to the discursive functionality of designed spaces, including three-dimensional space. The Marriot café is craved in history; it occupies three heritage buildings and two modern hotel blocks with six hundred ad thirty-four guest rooms... The tech is designed to have two sky gardens and two outdoor plants. The female guest rooms are designed to have feminine touches. The cafe's architecture is something that reflects how the hotel treats even the employees with dignity. The architecture reflects Singapore's cultural facets; the feminine touch means that the nation respects and protects women. The café has different restaurants that offer foods of different cultures hence systematically attracting different guests across the globe. 

The Singapore City, Orchard Road, and Marriot care can only be described in the literature using semiotic resources such as architecture, graphics, and visuals. The introductory part of chapter three is of great source since it outlines the main components of Halidayan's theory of language that the author uses to connect the research studies about Orchard Road and Marriot café. In chapter three, the author uses words like "mode," "modality," and "resource," which aren't used in Hallidayan fashion. Halidyan's theory was initially designed to elucidate the Chinese language. However, it was applied in use for grammar in English, a move that makes the theory questionable to what degree it can be applied t analyze other languages for it to be successful. Sidiropoulou (2006) notes that he found applying Halidayan's theory to analyze Greek texts difficult.  The article does not address the notion of universal theory language, which is problematic when it comes to discussing different cultures or objects. Alias takes an integrated approach to explain the architectural design of Orchard Road and Marriot Care to explain the city's social, cultural, and political dynamics. The type of style used is a modern phenomenon that helps authors use prescriptive descriptions of "correct styles" for a fuller analysis of language. 

In chapter three, partial discourse is used to analyze Singapore city architecture. Spatial texts help to define the architectures of buildings and make meaning out of it not only from the materials used but also from the non-material sources such as the layout, dimension, decorations, and regulations such as signs and padlocks (Ravelli & McMurtrie,2015). In chapter three, the author uses a social-semiotic approach to analyze the Orchad Roand and the Marriot Care. The Marriot cafe is placed along Orchard Road; its architecture arises from social and cultural contexts. 

Alias follows the work of Michael Halliday to explain the meaning of Orchard Road and Marriot care to the people of Singapore. Ravelli  & McMurtrie (2015) note that there are three types of meaning, representational, interactional, and organizational meaning. The Orchard Road is organized to promote business in the cities, there is less congestion and helps individuals exercise by walking hence restricting cars to avoid the road and individual congestion. The Orchard Road buildings also represent the country's policies and ideologies, building a sense of the world around us. The Marriot Café represents the state of restaurants in the city; also, the author uses it to depict the interactional meaning of the café in Singapore city.  The café also represents Singapore individuals in terms of culture; the hotel is designed to accommodate tourists and hold business meanings; thus, it so organized to boost the economy. Out of the three types of meanings(organizational, representing, and interactional), organizational meanings have the greatest impact on other meta-functions. 

The author notes that Singapore City kept evolving to meet the current standards in terms of tourism and business transactions meaning the organization of the city building's architecture kept on changing, thus changing interactional meanings and representation.  Marriot café was designed to represent luxury and business stopovers. The café represents functionality in Orchard Road. Unwin (2009) in Ravelli & McMurtrie (2015), the architecture in any given country represents the social process and identification of place. The paths, the openings, and the roofs are all basic elements of architecture that Alias used to describe Singapore city. 

The Orchard Road and Marriot Café were analyzed based on a systematic frame about the context of the choice of architecture and social and economic priorities.  Orchard Road and Marriot Cafe make a sociopetal space where they are facing each other, making contact with each other and increasing the chance of direct communication. The physical location creates a social meaning of coexisting to the individuals and tourists in Singapore. Despite Singapore lacking mineral materials, Singapore city is the epitome of tourism that creates social and economic thresholds. The malls and hotels offer a consumer culture that's so addictive and luxurious to attract foreign investors, business activities, and foreign mates. 

The Singapore city architecture is designed to provide sites and opportunities for all individuals regardless of their background, race, or color. Along Orchard Road, one can note the consistency in creating the luxury of space on different scales. The city is the epitome of a social-cultural center and is a" model city" in Asia; however, its architectural designs stratifies individual based on what they can consume such that there are different zones of different social and economic groups. The shopping experience and the luxury of the hotels vary in terms of goods presented, and the types of luxury one can attain hence architecturally stratifying individuals. The urbanization of Orchard Road since 1960 gives the city an urban landscape that Singaporeans are proud of. 

References 

Buhalis, D., & Leung, R. (2018). Smart hospitality—Interconnectivity and interoperability towards an ecosystem. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 71, 41-50. https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1016/j.ijhm.2017.11.011 

Hee, L. (2005). Singapore's orchard road as conduit: Between nostalgia and authenticity. Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, 51-63. https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.2307/41758304 

Hermawan, B. (2011). Reading Images. The Grammar of Visual Design, by Gunther Kress and Theo van. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1(1). Iedema, R. (2003). Multimodality, resemiotization: Extending the analysis of discourse as multi-semiotic practice. Visual communication, 2(1), 29-57. 

Iedema, R. (2003). Multimodality, resemiotization: Extending the analysis of discourse as multi-semiotic practice. Visual communication, 2(1), 29-57. https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1177/1470357203002001751 

O’Halloran, K. L. (2004). Visual semiosis in film. Multimodal discourse analysis: Systemic functional perspectives, 109-130. O’Halloran, K. L., & Fei, V. L. (2014). 13. Systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis. In Interactions, Images and Texts (pp. 137-154). De Gruyter Mouton. Ravelli, L. J., & McMurtrie, R. J. (2015). Multimodality in the built environment: Spatial discourse analysis. Routledge. https://books.google.co.ke/books?hl=en&lr=&id=oHP4CgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&ots=eXvr-sstjV&sig=FNlGjfqQtAxbLXZLo-lIA7zGgQc&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false Sidiropoulou, C. (2006). Book review: Multimodal discourse analysis: Systemic functional perspectives. Visual Communication, 5(1), 121-126. https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1177/147035720600500108