MULTIMODAL DISCOURSE: AN ANALYSIS OF TWO POLITICAL ADVERTISING VISUALS

Abstract

This study is interested in the persuasive and compelling modalities used by advertisers in political campaign advertising images, applied to persuade and impact their audiences. In this respect, this research focuses on two political campaigns posters, chosen by a non-random sampling procedure, commissioned by the Republic of Turkey current ruling party, and their main opposition, during the lead-up of the 2023 General Elections in Turkey. In this endeavour, a multimodal discourse analysis is utilised due to the study involving language and semiotic processes in a visual medium, serving as a foundation for the examination of the information gathered by Kress & van Leeuwen in 1996. In an effort to interpret the representational, interactional, and compositional meanings provided by the various parts of the chosen images, three metafunctions will be used. The results demonstrate that the visual grammar and multimodality-based theoretical framework may be adapted to the discourse of political advertisements. It was additionally found that the framework identified representational, interactional, and compositional processes, which contribute to the social interpretations of the images.