A MULTIMODAL ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL POSTERS OF THE AMERICAN ELECTION OF 2020

Abstract

The current study focuses on the United States Presidential election of 2020.The candidates of the presidency of the United States of America are the Democratic former vice president Joe Biden and the Republican Donald Trump. The aim of this study is to analyse the key political posters made for the campaigns of the elections. Four posters of the candidates in the election of 2020 have been chosen randomly, two for each of them. Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) model is adopted for the analysis of the visual devices. A political discourse perspective is used to  identify the main discoursal strategies employed to persuade the American population to vote in a certain direction. Van Leeuwen’s approach (2008) is adopted for this purpose. It concentrates on the representation of social actors in discourse as individuals or in groups, as active agents or patients. Nomination, functionalization and identification.

        It is hypothesized that the visual devices employed by both candidates are similar in some aspects and different in others.These devices reflect the idiologies of each party. The background of the posters, colours, orthography, body language and facial expressions have a similar effect to persuade the audience to vote for a certain candidate.

       It is also hypothesized that the written texts used in the US electional posters are characterized by ellipsis, repetition, positive language, and short phrases. The phrases and sentences are carefully chosen and worded so as to be more effective.