A Multimodal Analysis of Students' Commercial Copywriting

DOI

10.2991/prasasti-18.2018.49How to use a DOI?

Keywords

mode; multimodal; copywriting; commercial; composition

Abstract

Meanings in nowadays digitally based communication have been increasingly exchanged in a more multimodal form. Messages, which were once dominantly conveyed in verbal texts, have transformed into a variety of appearances that include the combination of different modes, such as texts, sounds, images and videos. This is also applied when people want to influence others for commercial purposes. This study is aimed at unpacking the ways commercial copies are constructed from the perspective of multimodality. From 49 commercial copies created by university students, 10 best copies according to peer evaluation were further analyzed. Three important aspects are focused on, namely the elements of copy, the meanings of composition, and the relationship between images and text, by respectively following the theoretical frameworks proposed by Maslen (2009), Kress and van Leeuwen (2006), and Marsh and White (2003). The study results in three important findings. First, benefit becomes the most dominant element in the copies. Second, in terms composition, the most dominant position of information value is top and bottom, emphasizing more on the relation of ideal and real. Salience is emphasized equally on both the textual and the visual elements, and so is the degree of connection and disconnection of visual elements. Finally, in terms of relationship between images and texts in the copies, functions of images expressing close relationship to the texts are mostly built. Students’ awareness to provide relevant images for the texts in their copies are evidenced in this study.

Copyright

© 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Riesky Riesky
PY  - 2018/08
DA  - 2018/08
TI  - A Multimodal Analysis of Students' Commercial Copywriting
BT  - Proceedings of the Fourth Prasasti International Seminar on Linguistics (Prasasti 2018)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 257
EP  - 261
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/prasasti-18.2018.49
DO  - 10.2991/prasasti-18.2018.49
ID  - Riesky2018/08
ER  -