The Use of Multimodality in Algerian and English Language Private Schools Advertisements.

Abstract

Communication is no more seen as a linguistic way to transmit ideas and messages rather a multimodal practice. Advertising is one among the many fields that reflect the combination of multiple modes to transmit different messages. The choices that govern these compositions need to be thoroughly analysed to understand the meaning of both what is said and what is not said. This research is an attempt to account for these aspects in a field that is not previously tackled; the advertisements designed in the field of teaching languages. More precisely, it deals with the advertisements of Algerian English and private language schools and the way in which both the linguistic and visual modes are integrated to transmit their messages. A further dimension of the work consists of establishing a comparison between the two contexts. This investigation is carried out relying on two different qualitative research techniques namely Critical Discourse Analysis and Social Semiotic Approach. These are applied on a corpus consisting of eight advertisements, three from the Algerian context and five from the English one. The study of this set of advertisements resulted in showing both the linguistic and the visual principles adopted by these schools to achieve their communicative purposes. Additionally, the comparison of these results reveals shared similarities as well as differences. This research comes out with significant conclusions; it exposes the applicability of the three metafunctions to non-western culture, which is the Algerian one. It highlights also the importance of combining linguistic and visual resources either to add or to reinforce meaning.