Multimodality toolkit for political discourse analysis: a focus on visual rhetoric

Abstract

This chapter revisits the main concepts in multimodality, gives examples of their applications, provides an overview of selected dominant research orientations and includes several methodological protocols for description, interpretation and explanation of multimodal aspects of discourse. Subsequently, the chapter focuses on one perspective or subfield of multimodal research, visual rhetoric, and illustrates results and methods used for selected studies related to political persuasion, before explaining how it contributes to the understanding of contemporary political discourses. It argues that visual imagery has long been used for voter persuasion and legitimization of political power, but it can also build collective memory, drive politicized issue campaigns, and act as cultural repository for mobilizing social actions. However, in mediated political messages the rhetorical potential is usually hidden behind representation, aesthetics or composition and a degree of critical visual literacy is needed to unpack it. Consequently, the chapter concludes by underscoring the need for awareness of the repertoire of rhetorical devices that can be deployed to persuade with visuals, be they schematic or creative, artistic or mundane, staged or realistic, raw or manipulated.