Multimodal Analysis of Selected Health Awareness Materials: A Visual Grammar Approach

Abstract

The Visual Grammar approach is effective in examining the communicative value of healthcare posters. As semiotic resources, these posters comprise both images and text for persuasive and informative ends. Previous studies have looked at multilingual health care texts and medical information leaflets using different approaches, but the focus here was monolingual healthcare posters written in English. Hence, this study analyzed five purposefully selected online healthcare posters meant for a Nigerian audience. It looks at the ways image and text cohere as syntagm within narrative and conceptual representations to form persuasive and informative messages, and the multimodal constraints on the healthcare posters as they serve communicative ends. A descriptive research design was adopted to analyse corpus from five online health care materials. Features of the materials were identified and classified according to manifested multimodal features before they were subjected to narrative and conceptual analyses. The way image and text cohere; their functions and communicative values were also discussed to highlight attendant constraints. Findings show that as a multimodal text the healthcare posters employ semiotic resources to project messages as either contextualized or decontextualized. Major and minor semiotic processes, achieved by image and text coherence, form both narrative and conceptual meaning-making units. Added to this informative value are colour variations and font size which are also employed as enhancers of detail, mood and contrast as well as attention drawing devices. Logos of sponsors give the health messages varying credibility values as rhetorical questions and advice-clauses serve persuasive ends. Thus, the study concluded that the communicative potential of a healthcare poster are hinged on semiotic resources that constrain readers’ or viewers’ perceptions on health matters.