Multi Modal Language Analysis

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Modern technological advancements have led to great innovations in language use in multimodal discourses. Innovation is one way of transforming the resources of an enterprise through the creativity of people into new resources and wealth. Language in television advertisements uses verbal and visual modes of signification to craft their discourses and it is a rich site from which to observe the creative application of multimodality. This poses challenges to viewers because in multimodal discourses, viewers are faced with the changing phenomenon in which language per se is being displaced by sound and image, taking over tasks associated with the role of language. It is this synergy across semiotic modalities that we analyze in one Always sanitary …show more content…

Two girls are walking to school. One girl is dull, cheerless and slow while the other is up-and-going. They meet other girls on the playground. Her friend complains that she is “too slow today”. The first girl informs her friend that she has got “issues with tissue” as she removes a roll of tissue paper from her bag and shows it to her friend. The second girl produces a pack of Always and says it is the better way to deal with the issue. They converge around a table inside a room to demonstrate how Always absorbs blue ink liquid as opposed to tissue which leaves a messy mark behind. They dance, throw away rolls of tissue as they rush to school in time for classes when the teacher rings the bell. One girl at the centre of the crowd holds up a pack of Always and shows it to the viewer. All this is presented in the form of song, dance and action as the lines of the song scroll at the bottom of the television screen. This is a case of innovation in language use as we witness the juxtaposition of verbal and visual modes of signification in crafting the compositional meanings in a television advertisement rendered entirely in action and …show more content…

Multimodal Discourse Analysis is a theory of reading images, in which Kress and Van Leeuwen highlight the importance of taking into account semiotics other than language-in-use. Multimodal discourse analysis is an emerging paradigm in discourse studies which extends the study of language per se to the study of language in combination with other resources, such as images, scientific symbolism, gesture, action, soundtracks and music. The theory is relevant in examining the innovations in the language of television