The Building Blocks of Language and Creativity: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Toy Advertisements

Abstract

This research aims to explore the verbal and visual resources and cultural aspects used in online toy advertisements. The data comprises 142 advertisements sourced from the official international Lego Facebook page. Three analytical frameworks were employed in the study. First, Halliday’s (1994) systemic functional linguistics was used to analyze verbal resources. Second, Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) social semiotics was used to examine visual resources. Third, Hofstede et al.’s (2010) cultural dimensions were applied to the aspects of culture. The investigation of verbal resources reveals three main ideational metafunctions: material, relational, and mental. Also, declarative mood and unmarked topical themes dominantly occurred in the clauses. For the visual analysis, the advertisements tend to use conceptual symbolic images with vibrant and contrasting colors to make the brand memorable and convey positive values. The positions of participants (RP) also reveal the significance of the brand. There is interconnectedness between visual resources and verbal resources for the advertisements to be cohesive. Remarkably, all six cultural dimensions were found aligned with the American cultural aspects, except for masculinity and long-term orientation. This suggests Lego's commitment to promoting equality, unity, and the attempt to construct more effective worldwide marketing.