The Generic Structure Potential of Printed Advertisements: A Multi-Semiotic Analysis of Selected Nollywood Film Advertisement Posters

Abstract

As complex forms of visual communication primarily employed to create awareness about movies, posters consist of highly interpretative systems of modes of multimodal communication aimed at encouraging patronage. This study, therefore, investigates how these multimodes elements are embedded in film posters and how they communicate with the audience. Yuen’s (2004) Generic Structure Potential and Royce’s (1998) Ideational Intersemiotic Complementarity frameworks serve to unearth the visual and linguistic semiotic resources and their interaction in film advertisement posters. The data comprises five selected Nollywood film advertisement posters accessed through online platforms. Findings reveal that visual modes are more prominent and frequently employed in the advertisement posters than the linguistic modes. However, the combination of the visual and the linguistic modes offers a complementary relationship in communicating and persuading viewers to patronage. The study concludes that the semiotic resources deployed in the posters about the shared knowledge of the image producers and prospective viewers, as well as the Nigerian socio-cultural context, all work concurrently to positively affect the sales and marketing of the films.