Animal Symbolism in the Propaganda Posters: A Comparative Multimodal Analysis
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Date
2021
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Mouloud Mammeri University OF Tizi-Ouzou
Abstract
This research aims at examining ‘Animal Symbolism’ in the propaganda posters, which are
chronologically selected according to their different contexts: the First World War, the
Second World War, the Cold War, the U.S. Politics, and the Conspiracy Theory of the Neocolonial
period. The corpus consists of twelve propaganda posters. The focus of this study is
in the field of Social Semiotics in order to examine the use of ‘Animal Symbolism’ in
propaganda posters as the overall objective, and the other focus is to reach the four sub -
goals: to examine visually the pragmatic meanings of ‘Animal Symbolism’ in the propaganda
posters through conducting a comparative multimodal analysis in the basis of the
‘Multimodality Theory’ as a new approach of communication; to classify the posters after
finding the differences and the similarities; to help the target readership to deeply understand
that ‘Animal Symbolism’ is the visual metaphor and the role it plays in the propaganda
posters with a cross-cultural perspective. To unveil both the role that the multimodality
approach plays to find the hidden ideologies (conspiracy theories) as multimodal discourses
in the propaganda posters as multimodal texts, and to unveil the complementary relationship
between the old conspiracy theory (ies) and the modern theory of multimodality as the neocolonial
approach. Then, in order to reach these sub – purposes, a Qualitative Research
Method has been adopted and the results are analysed with a Qualitative Content Analysis
that relies on the two multimodal tools: ‘Eight Carriers of Connotation (Machin, 2007)’ and
the ‘Visual Grammar (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006)’. The findings of the research have
revealed and have clarified that the propaganda posters without typography are quietly
similar with the ones that have it in terms of the psychological impact on the target audiences,
it has also been proved that the approach of multimodality is important to develop the
critical thinking by unveiling the connotative ideologies as multimodal discourses in the
propaganda posters as multimodal texts and the role of multimodality to take things seriously
by comprehending the pragmatic signification of the semiotic resources.
Description
74p. ; Ill. en coul. ; 30cm.+(cd)
Keywords
Cross-Cultural Perspective, the Eight Carriers of Connotation, Visual Grammar, the Typography, Multimodal Discourses, Multimodal Texts, Critical Thinking.
Citation
Didactics of Foreign Languages