Abstract
This study examined the interplay of pictorial and written modes that position advertising as a multimodal genre, explainable through a social semiotic perspective. Eight advertisements of the financial, telecommunications, and beverage products functioned as devices of analysis. Nevertheless, multimodal communicative acts served as the processing tool, elucidating the meaning potentials of the advertising configurations. Having deployed a system of multimodal interacts, tables and graphs assisted in accounting for the frequency of the semiotic resources of the written modes. The analysis indicated large and highlighted fonts (Celebrating the world’s no. 1 fixer), repetitions (Guinness, Maltina, real deal), and deviant constructs (EazyLoans, GTWorld) as elements of propagating intended messages. The deployment of codes (*966*11#, 737) and fragmented clauses (Over N100 million worth of airtime) played some roles in the meaning-making operations. Of significance is the Guinness’ conceptual “digits” of 17:59, contextualising the year, time, and channel of promotional benefits. Though questions (Have you called mum today?), offer (It can be), and minor clauses (Welcome to Guinness time) were parts of the communicative systems, statements (Terms and condition apply) and commands (Enjoy the complete richness of Maltina) dominated the entire dialogues. One might suggest that communicators should endeavour to deploy apt constructions and create eye-lines between participants as means of sensitising readers into consumption.
Highlights
The idea of Genre cuts across disciplines
The researcher has used this section to delineate some outcomes of the study regarding the research questions (RQs)
The RQs are in four sub-sections, highlighting the results with a combination of qualitative (RQs 1 & 2) and quantitative (RQs 3 & 4) analyses
Summary
The idea of Genre cuts across disciplines. This is a reason for experiencing different kinds of writing styles and processes in communicative enterprises, operational between the writer and the target audience. The notion of genre informs one’s observation of different linguistic and semiotic structures in diverse communication affairs (Bateman 2013). That is a probable motive for Bhatia (2008) to describe genre as a conventionalised semiotic resource employed to express specific goals in a certain environment. It is deducible : Genre is a semiotic construct encircled with a particular setting.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call