A Multimodal Critical Study of Selected Political Rally Campaign Discourse of 2011 Elections in Southwestern Nigeria

Abstract

Multimodal communication is at the heart of political campaigns. The 2011 electioneering campaigns in Nigeria witnessed an interesting use of multimodal resources for the expression of meaning. While Ademilokun and Olateju (2016) examined and interpreted some of such multimodal elements from a descriptive perspective, the present study extends engagement with the subject as it seeks to tease out critical meanings embedded in the multimodal ensembles. Data for the study were purposively obtained from the collection of multimodal resources deployed in the Southwestern part of Nigeria during the 2011 electioneering campaigns in Nigeria. The study is hinged on the theoretical provisions of Machin and Mayr (2012). The study demonstrates that the multimodal resources in the 2011 electioneering campaigns in Southwestern Nigeria are purveyors of gender, carnivalesque and communal ideologies which are used largely for negotiating and perpetuating political and class hegemony. The study further shows that cultural and political identities are strategically used for political marketing and legitimation through the political campaign visuals. Power is also enacted in the renegotiation of gender ideology and the hegemonic configuration of the rallies. The study concludes that visuality in political rally communication in Nigeria is a useful index for ideologies and identities drawn upon for political survival by politicians and political parties in the nation.