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A Multimodal Analysis Of The Environment Beat In A Music Video, Judith (Judie) Cross, Carmen Maier

Judith (Judie) L Cross

The interrelationships between the environment and society have become cause for general concern amongst a diverse range of members in the international community of the twenty-first century. In this chapter, Michael Jackson’s music video, Earth Song, is critically analyzed in order to explore how environmental concerns are construed and communicated through a multimodal text specific to popular culture. We use a social semiotic perspective to analyze in detail how semiotic modes interrelate and impact on the conceptualization of time and space, as vital ingredients for the complex and dynamic ways by which meanings, values and practices are realized and communicated.