The Multimodal Construction of Affective Stance in ASMR Videos

Multimedia technology develops and brings considerable changes in interpersonal communication. Nowadays, communicating with non-verbal languages such as pictures, texts, music, etc. is a common occurrence. And scholars have started to construe the meaning behind these new discourses which are carried by more than one mode. As a result, it unseals the gate to the analysis of multimodal discourses. ASMR videos, autonomic sensory meridian response videos related to aural and visual stimuli, are born to be multimodal discourses, but are rarely studied. Therefore, 5 ASMR videos on YouTube are chosen as the data for this thesis. And backed up by the foundation stones—visual grammar and audio grammar, an analysis of the selected videos was made in an audio-visual mode in order to elaborate on the transmittal of affective stance in them. The present study shows that ASMR performers all index intimate affective stances. Besides, performers have different focuses in their video making. Some focus on visual stimuli, such as on putting contact lenses, while others focus on aural stimuli with either high pitch or broad pitch range to stimulate the audience or low pitch and narrow pitch range to create a relaxing atmosphere. By analyzing the selected videos, the present study may serve as an expansion of the construction of affective stance and an exploration of ASMR in linguistics. Meanwhile, it provides suggestions for future studies in ASMR.