Semiotic Analysis of Three QSR Instagram Posts During COVID-19 Outbreak

Abstract

The COVID-19 outbreak has impacted various aspects of human life, and this includes the economy. Therefore, businesses must address their survival promptly by implementing more aggressive and creative marketing methods that use social media platforms. Although touted as Malaysia’s top three quick service restaurants (QSR), the pandemic also affected KFC, McDonald’s, and Pizza Hut. Therefore, this research was conducted to investigate the advertisement language of these three brands’ Instagram posts. The paper intends first to study how text producers use linguistic and non-linguistic representations to position their businesses amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, it aims to explain how specific language use, image, and style can bring about meaning to customers of the position of the brands during these trying times. The theory that underpins this paper is M. A. K. Halliday’s Social Semiotic Theory of Language (1978). Semiotic analysis was employed as an analytic tool due to its ability to foreground aspects that may not be noticeable in plain reading. The data for this study was collected from the Instagram pages of the three brands during the period of the first Movement Control Order (MCO) exercised in Malaysia from March 18 to May 3, 2020.