Intertextuality as a Driver of Multimodal Creativity in Political Advertising

Journal of Siberian Federal University. Series: Humanities & Social Sciences. 2024. Vol. 17. No. 5. P. 950–962.

Baranova M., Svetlana Yu. Pavlina

This article is concerned with the creative use of intertextual elements in multimodal discourse. Specifically, it explores the way intertextuality is employed in political posters to shape the meaning and transmit the desired message. The material includes British and American campaign posters viewed as semiotically complex texts in which verbal and non-verbal modes build some links with prior texts. The purpose of this research is to reveal the way the pre-existing verbal texts and images are modified to build a new meaning. The study is set in the integrated framework of multimodal discourse analysis, intertextual analysis and cognitive stylistics. The research establishes the types of transformations prior texts undergo in the process of recontextualization. It offers a new perspective on the mapping of pre-existing texts’ modifications and reveals patterns typical of visual political advertising that encompass not only verbal but also non-verbal modes. The findings show that intertextualization triggers the employment of rhetorical means which include verbal and visual metaphor and metonymy, irony, parody and word play. The research opens avenues for investigation of intertextuality and creativity in other forms of visual communication, namely static and dynamic promotional texts.

Keywords: креативность, creativity, трансформации, intertextuality, интертекстуальность, political advertising, политическая реклама, transformations, поликодовый текст, multimodal texts