A SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS-BASED MULTIMODAL ANALYSIS OF CIGARETTE ADVERTISEMENTS ON BILLBOARDS
Daftar Isi:
- This paper analyzed nine cigarette billboard advertisements from various tobacco companies in Indonesia, using Cheong’s (2004) generic structure of print advertisements and bidirectional transaction of meaning between modes, Halliday’s (2014) systemic functional linguistics, and visual grammar by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen (2006). Specifically, this paper analyzed the interplay between the verbal text and visual image in cigarette advertisements to see what meanings are communicated from the collaboration of modes. This is considered as a point of interest because unlike other commercialized goods, there are government regulations in Indonesia that forbids cigarette advertisements to show their product nor the act of smoking itself. Therefore, this paper analyzed how the verbal and visual elements work together in representing the product despite the government-issued limitations. The result reveals that the verbal and visual elements work together in delivering three categories of meaning; to represent cigarette as an identity trait, to represent the idealized version of the audience, and as a way for the advertisement to show the cigarette’s selling points through symbolizations. The verbal and visual modes delivered these meanings by contextualizing each other.