Visual Grammar and Meaning: A Multi-Modal Discourse Analysis of Selected Jubilee Life Insurance Company Advertisements

Abstract

With the development of technology and advancement of media, the advertisements are no more mono-modal discourses. Instead, advertisements utilize multiple modes to catch the eyes of the viewers and to win the hearts of desired customers. Today traditional literacy alone fails to interpret modern day multimodal texts like advertisements. This paper based on Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (1996) theory of Visual Grammar, analyzes two non-product advertisements of Jubilee Life Insurance Company, Pakistan, to find out how visual communication is carried out through a relation between these semiotic modes. The analysis has shown that semiotic modes are used by the ad makers to represent participants and also to maintain a relation between the represented participants and the viewers. The study also highlights how the ideology of the involved participants works to communicate the desired meanings to the target audience through these the interrelated systems of semiotic modes within a business discourse.