ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I will focus on telop, or creative pop-up captions on TV, which are gaining global popularity. I will present a relevance-theoretic analysis of telop use, analysing a range of telop uses and discussing the role of telop in guiding viewers’ engagement with TV programmes. I will show how telop serves to trigger specific emotional responses, fosters cognitive and affective mutuality, and bridges verbal and non-verbal information within the multimodal context of a TV programme. Throughout these instances, telop emerges as a potent tool for guiding viewers’ attention and their interpretation processes in line with the producers’ editorial intentions.
