Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Selected Advertisements in Nigerian Newspapers

2022-06-12T18:28:46+00:00

Communication has become inextricable part of human living and the visual modes of
communication has been employed in the print media as a veritable means of communicating
very serious issues metaphorically. Thus, Multimodal Discourse Analysis constitutes a form of
discourse which requires visual display of knowledge to understand and interpret any given text.
Several attempts have been made on the study of Newspaper advertisements using canonical
classification of Speech’s act, Implicature, as well as linguistic resources for its analysis.
However, little attention has been given to Multimodal Discourse Analysis in analyzing
newspaper advertisements in Nigerian newspapers. Hence, this paper aims at investigating a
multimodal analysis of selected advertisements in Nigerian newspapers with a view to exploring
how texts, images, symbols, pictures help advertisers to adequately communicate their
message/intention, and what the various pictures and images mean and their contributions to
meaning-making in the adverts to the audience. To achieve this, seven (7) advertisements were
purposively selected and analysed from two Nigerian daily newspapers (The Punch, The Sun and
The Nation) and adopted Multimodal Discourse Analysis and its elements as the theoretical
appurtenances undergirding the study. The study revealed that more meaning would have been
lost, if not for the advancement of scholars on the exponent of multimodality. This was because
people tend to be more concentrated on the monomodal; linguistic approach to meaning, whereas
study of data as newspapers’ advertisements and other visual designs transported more than one
mode of meaning to communicate a more complete, coherent and complementary meaning. The
study also revealed that the semiotic devices (i.e. images, pictures, colours, etc.) deployed are
meant to attract the attention of the readers and to communicate product features and benefits,
and also persuade and motivate them to patronize the product being advertised. It was also
discovered that graphic/page designers and photo journalists usually make judicious use of visual
elements to convey meaning based on certain conventions and ideology associated with those
elements. The study concludes that understanding the import of newspaper advertisements
requires mutual sharing of knowledge by both the advertisers and the readers.

Voices: A Journal of English Studies

Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Selected Advertisements in Nigerian Newspapers