Text linguistics and critical discourse analysis: A multimodal analysis of a magazine advertisement

Abstract

Drawing on Fairclough's (1995) three-dimensional framework of discourse analysis of communicative events, in this paper we carry out a multimodal analysis of a diners Club international magazine advertisement. Moving from the description of how textimage (Mitchell 1995) constructs a problem-solution structure in the advertisement to the discussion of its discourse and sociocultural practices, the paper foregrounds a multilayered ideological message, besides the construal of a need (problem) for a product (solution). Through its multimodal structure, the advertisement seems to tap on two important sociological issues: the avoidance of human togetherness and the colonization of travelling by consumer markets (bauman 2007).