Multimodality toolkit for political discourse analysis: a focus on visual rhetoric

Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska and Agnieszka Kampka

Chapter 15 in Handbook of Political Discourse, 2023, pp 235-249 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter revisits the main concepts in multimodality, gives examples of their applications, provides an overview of selected dominant research orientations and includes several methodological protocols for description, interpretation and explanation of multimodal aspects of discourse. Subsequently, the chapter focuses on one perspective or subfield of multimodal research, visual rhetoric, and illustrates results and methods used for selected studies related to political persuasion, before explaining how it contributes to the understanding of contemporary political discourses. It argues that visual imagery has long been used for voter persuasion and legitimization of political power, but it can also build collective memory, drive politicized issue campaigns, and act as cultural repository for mobilizing social actions. However, in mediated political messages the rhetorical potential is usually hidden behind representation, aesthetics or composition and a degree of critical visual literacy is needed to unpack it. Consequently, the chapter concludes by underscoring the need for awareness of the repertoire of rhetorical devices that can be deployed to persuade with visuals, be they schematic or creative, artistic or mundane, staged or realistic, raw or manipulated.

Keywords: Politics and Public Policy Research Methods; Sociology and Social Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781800373570/9781800373570.00024.xml (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:20092_15

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().