TEXT-IMAGE RELATIONS IN TRADITIONAL AND POSTMODERN PUBLIC SERVICE ADVERTISING (BASED ON ENGLISH PSA ON COVID-19)

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the analysis of text-image relations as of two different semiotic modes within the framework of multimodal studies in the traditional and postmodern English public service advertising (PSA) on COVID-19. The tendency towards image-centricity and linguistic compression in the design of ads has influenced intermodal cohesion in PSA posters. Traditional PSA is advertising based on explicit cohesive ties and semantic redundancy. Intermodal cohesion in traditional PSA builds on hierarchical relations of elaboration and linear relations of illustration. Postmodern PSA is a semiotically minimalistic verbal-visual unity, multimodal small-format text with clearly expressed semantics and symbolism. Postmodern PSA offers ambiguous and minimalistic unity of verbal and visual signs that is, at first sight, incongruent, incoherent. The recipient establishes intermodal cohesion through intersemiotic inferences. Intermodal cohesion in postmodern visual-centric PSA is built mainly on the relations of extension or spatial-temporal / causal enhancement, as they lead to incongruency and multimodal tension, which intrigue the recipient and involve them more actively in the process of decoding of the advertising’s message. On the spatial syntax level, linear relations of anchorage or alteration are characteristic for postmodern PSA. On the rhetorical-logical level, relations based on coincidental allusive ties predominate in postmodern PSA. Postmodern advertising is less directive and explicit than traditional advertising, opting for a less direct communication style. The specific nature of postmodern image-centric PSA is predetermined by multimodal and rhetorical complexity, semantic ambiguity, incongruity, and pragmatic under-specification. Interpretation of multimodal PSA texts depends on denotative and connotative meanings of the visual and verbal components, recipient’s general and culture-specific knowledge, and peculiarities of PSA discourse. The theoretical and methodological framework of the study combines works on multimodality and text-image relations (J. Bateman, G. Kress & T. van Leeuwen, H. Stöckl, H. Caple, R. Martinec & A. Salway, L. Makaruk, V. Yefymenko), as well as on advertising discourse (H. Stöckl, S. Gieszinger, S. Molnar, S. Bulmer & M. Buchanan-Oliver).