Multimodal analysis of a sample of political posters in Ireland during and after the Celtic Tiger

The aim of this research paper is to analyse the key political posters made for the campaigns of Irish political party Fianna Fáil framed in the Celtic Tiger (1997-2008) and post-Celtic Tiger years (2009-2012). I will then focus on the four posters of the candidate in the elections that took place in 1997, 2002, 2007 and 2011 with the intention of observing first how the leader is represented, and later on pinpointing the similarities and possible differences between each. This is important in order to observe the main linguistic and visual strategies used to persuade the audience to vote that party and to highlight the power of the politician. Critical discourse analysis tools will be helpful to identify the main discursive strategies employed to persuade the Irish population to vote in a certain direction. Van Leeuwen’s (2008) social actor theory will facilitate the understanding of how participants are represented in the corpus under analysis. Finally, the main tools of Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar (2006) will be applied for the analysis of the images. The study reveals that politicians are represented in a consistently positive way, with status and formal appearance so that people are persuaded to vote for the party they represent because they trust them as political leaders. The study, thus, points out that the poster is a powerful tool used in election campaigns to highlight the power of political parties.

Una visión comunicacional de la política en Ecuador: Rafael Correa y su bicicleta

Este artículo analiza el video oficial de la campaña del Presidente Correa denominado “spot bicicleta”, elemento promocional usado en las elecciones seccionales del 2013, toma como referencia de análisis las estructuras fonológicas, gráficas, sintácticas y semánticas. La pieza con una duración de 3:30 minutos, recuerda el proceso de “Revolución Ciudadana”, emprendido por el partido Alianza País (35); y resalta la condición de servicio del Presidente, cuyo eje principal es la Patria. El discurso gira entorno a la pobreza, la esperanza y el deseo del Presidente de continuar en el poder. Toda la pieza audiovisual está matizada con elementos posicionados en la mente de los ecuatorianos, usados como una estrategia de persuasión.