Multimodal intertextuality and persuasion in advertising discourse

Abstract

This paper provides an integrated social semiotic framework for analyzing intertextuality in multimodal advertising discourse. Following the distinction between manifest intertextuality and interdiscursivity, our model entails the three interrelated components of explicating what the intertextual sources are, how they are constructed with multimodal resources, and how they interact with the promotional discourse. Analysis of 30 popular video advertisements shows the fundamental role of character voices and different social semiotic activities in achieving the purpose of promoting products and services. Through intertextual devices, the advertisements construct multiple identities, including authoritative and peer ones, to evoke different reading positions. In particular, the identity of middle-class urbanites sharing their experiences and values with the audience is dominant. The intertextual devices achieve promotional, relational, and entertainment functions, and the promotional function is realized through sharing, recreating, expounding, and reporting activities, while the recommending activities only occupy a very small portion of the screen time of the advertisements. The framework of multimodal intertextuality provides a useful lens for explicating the complex meaning-making resources, their communicative functions, and hidden ideologies in advertising discourse, which can further provide new insight into the social reality.