Functional perspective on precedence-setting tokens in visual political communication

Abstract

The article deals with the functional attribution of precedence-setting tokens in British and American campaign posters. The posters are viewed as multimodal texts whose meaning is built in the course interaction of semiotically heterogenious elements. The purpose of this research is to establish functional properties of precedence-setting tokens incorporated in political still visuals. This study is set in the framework of multimodal discourse analysis which is complemented by functional semantic and structural semantic analyses. The study shows that in political still visuals each semiotic mode can establish links with a broad cultural context, so precedence-setting tokens are found with linguistic, pictorial, graphical and colour modes. The analysis of sauces of intertextuality reveals that most of them are culture specific, a small fraction of sources is culture universal as they relate to the texts belonging to the world culture. The research establishes some correlation between the sources of precedence-setting tokens and the function these elements play. Being involved in visual political communication culture specific precedence-setting tokens perform nominative, persuasive, ludic, attention-drawing and identity assessment functions. The analysis shows that the identity assessment function is not found with culture universal precedence-setting tokens. Although the main aim of political advertising is to persuade the people to make correct electoral choices, not all precedence-setting tokens perform the function of persuasion as they are not ideologically marked. The research elucidates certain functional pragmatic aspects of campaign still visuals and opens new avenues in studying interrelation of culture and visual political communication.