In this paper I look at legitimation in multimodal texts. By focusing first upon genre analysis from a social semiotic perspective, and highlighting the complications it presents for genre identification, I lay a conceptual framework for looking at the specific genre of political spot ads. Analyzing a small selection of such ads used in the 2008 American presidential campaign, I show how the legitimating features they contain, although recognizable from more traditional studies, have been strikingly and successfully adapted to a new context. Furthermore, I suggest that this reworking marks a shift in the hierarchy of legitimating tools: a shift away from the unquestioned primacy of text and talk.
2023. Approaches to the Analysis of Metadiscourse Features in Political Discourse. Complutense Journal of English Studies 31 ► pp. e81534 ff.
Chaidas, Dimitrios
2018. The benefits of narratology in the analysis of multimodal legitimation: The case of New Democracy. Discourse & Communication 12:3 ► pp. 258 ff.
Elyamany, Nashwa
2024. Militarized aesthetics of hegemonic masculinity in America’s Army: Proving Grounds (2013): a multimodal legitimation analysis. Visual Communication 23:1 ► pp. 49 ff.
Ross, Andrew S.
2020. Discursive delegitimisation in metaphorical #secondcivilwarletters: an analysis of a collective Twitter hashtag response. Critical Discourse Studies 17:5 ► pp. 510 ff.
Wong, May L-Y
2022. Multimodality in Hong Kong government posters from the 1950s–1980s: an appraisal analysis and the discursive construction of legitimation. Semiotica 2022:246 ► pp. 249 ff.
Yu, Hailing & Ye Yan
2024. Legitimation in documentary: modes of representation and legitimating strategies in The Lockdown: One Month in Wuhan. Visual Communication 23:1 ► pp. 29 ff.
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