Impact caption as a highlighting device: Attempts at viewer manipulation on TV

• The role of impact captions can be explained in terms of highlighting devices.
• TV writers use impact captions as a tool to manipulate viewers’ interpretations.
• Impact captions raise cognitive mutuality between viewers and characters.
• This study provides a relevance theoretic analysis of multimodal contents in media.

The novel use of intra-lingual subtitles other than as an aid for the hard-of-hearing population originated from Japanese TV in the 1990s. This innovative use, also known as impact captions, is now seen as a feature of Japanese (and other Asian) TV but has also spread into Western broadcasts (cf. the drama series Sherlock on BBC and the film Night Watch) in recent years. However, there is little research on the interpretive mechanism or viewer experience of such use and hence industries continue to use impact captions in an ad hoc manner. Working within Sperber and Wilson׳s (1995) relevance theory, this paper is an attempt to explain the way viewers interpret the content of programmes with impact captions and the role these captions play in the interpretation process. I claim that impact captioning is a device the creators can use to manipulate the viewers’ interpretation by highlighting certain elements.