Bringing a museum of language to life: the use of multimodal resources for interactional engagement in the Museu da Língua Portuguesa, Brazil

Abstract: The popular and highly successful Museu da Língua Portuguesa1 in São Paulo, Brazil, is renowned for its visitor engagement strategies. While this success is often attributed to high levels of technological interactivity enabled in the museum displays, we argue that the success of the museum also comes from a range of other multimodal resources. Using a social semiotic approach to spatial discourse analysis, we examine each of the three levels/floors of the museum, identifying the various meaning-making resources across the representational, organizational, and interactional metafunctions. These both differentiate the separate levels of the museum, and bring them together as a unified whole, creating a strong focus on cultural identity and on placing the visitor in the centre of meaning-making practices.

摘要：坐落于巴西圣保罗的葡萄牙语博物馆（Museu da Língua Portuguesa）兼具高人气与卓越成效，其凭借游客参与策略享誉全球。尽管该馆的成功常被归结为展陈中搭载的高水平技术互动性，但我们认为，其成功同样源于一系列其他多模态资源。本研究采用社会符号学视角下的空间话语分析范式，对该博物馆的三层展区逐一展开考察，梳理出再现元功能、组织元功能与互动元功能框架下的各类意义构建资源。这些资源既区分了各展区的独特属性，又将其整合为一个统一整体，既紧密聚焦文化身份建构，又将游客置于意义构建实践的核心地位。