MULTIMODALDISCOURSEANALYSISOFSELECTEDPOLITICALCARTOONSINNIGERIANNEWSPAPERS  

2019-08-14
Overthe pastfew decades,communication has becomemultimodalbecauseamessagethatis;multimodalismoreconvincingthanamessagethatismonomodalinnature.Infact,viewerawarenessandunderstandingincreasewhenthereisafusionofmorethanonesemioticresource,becauseeachofthesemioticresourcesplaysitsownroleindevelopingatextormessage.ThestudyaimsatanalysinglinguisticandnonlinguisticsemioticresourcesofselectedpoliticalcartoonsintwoNigeriannewspapersinordertoinvestigatehowtheywereusedtoprojectsocio-politicalissues.Fourteen(14)politicalcartoonsthatdepictedvariouspoliticalactivitiesduringthe2019generalelectioninNigeriawereanalysedusingKressandvanLeeuweenvisualsocialsemioticapproachtomodalityastheoreticalframework.Resultsoftheanalysisrevealedthatthelinguisticsemioticresourcewhichisthetextualcomponentofthecartoonhelpsincomplementingthemeaningsofthenonlinguisticsemioticresources.Itwasalsoobservedthatthelinguisticsemioticresourcesprovidethereaderwiththesurface(semantic)meaningwhereasthenonlinguisticresourcesprovidetheviewerwiththehidden(pragmatic)meaningofwhatthecartoonistintendstopassacrosstothetargetaudience.Thestudyconcludesthatvisualimagesarelinguistictoolsthatcanbeusedforinterpretationandunderstandingofsensitiveissuesmostespeciallywhenstrongandpowerfulpoliticalissuesarediscussed. Keywords:Multimodal,Politicalcartoon,Semioticresources,Nationaldailies