A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of a Sample of Posters Used in the 2016 and 2020 Election Campaigns in Ireland

Abstract

The main objective of this research is to analyse the main similarities and differences in the way the political leaders of the Irish political parties Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are portrayed in the political posters of the general election campaigns of 2016 and 2020 in Ireland. The analysis of the posters will shed light on how the visual and linguistic characteristics contribute to the portrayal of the politicians and to the way they are empowered as leaders. Therefore, this article highlights the importance of the poster in the creation of political power. The politicians in the posters will be approached as social actors and the political poster understood as a multimodal text. Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar (2021) will be used to analyse the compositional design of the poster. Moreover, van Leeuwen’s model of visual social actors (2008) will be used to analyse how social distance, social relation and social interaction contribute to establishing a relationship between the politician represented and the audience. The results of the research will show the main strategies employed in order to persuade people to vote for one party instead of another, in the sample selected.