The Languages of Virtual Migration Museums: A Multimodal Perspective

This volume intends to outline the key contours of migration discourse in three virtual museums: the Virtual Museum of Greek Immigration to Canada, the Virtual Museum of Caribbean Migration and Memory, and the California Migration Museum. By exclusively adopting a linguistic framework, the central aim of this book is to identify and analyse the discursive strategies employed to represent various migratory experiences. To grasp a portion of the complexity of migration representation, the categories of ‘departures’ and ‘arrivals’ have been designated for analytical purposes. Drawing on Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, this study analyses the basic semiotic choices in the selected museum texts to understand the configuration of identities and social roles. This work hopes that this brief exploration of the uncharted territory of virtual museums may also raise curiosity about their features and the communication strategies that can convincingly build the core values of ‘community’ and ‘heritage’, hopefully leading to social change.