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Multimodal Analysis of Online Protest Visuals on Female Genital Mutilation
Adetutu Aragbuwa & Victor O. Adejumo
Department of English and Literary Studies, Ekiti State University, Ado Ekiti
Abstract
Multimodality in modern linguistic research has become popular with scholars exploring multiple semiotic resources in diverse social contexts. However, despite the abundance of studies in this field, the multimodality of online protest visuals on female genital mutilation (FGM) remains under-studied. To fill this research gap therefore, this paper elicits the multimodal resources in select online protest visuals on FGM and analyses their communicative functions as semiotic ensembles of protest against FGM. This is with a view to understanding how the visual elements form coherent visual statements of resistance against FGM. Twenty (20) purposively selected online visuals on FGM are subjected to qualitative analysis using Kress and van Leeuwen's (2006) Visual Grammar. The data analysis reveals that the images are all ideationally narrative with some embedding processes; and this cumulative narrativity represents participants “doing protests” to end the practice of FGM. Other multimodal resources such as transactions, reactions, bidirectionality, demand, offer and close shots, horizonal and vertical compositions, among others, are realised in the visuals to interactively perform directive, declarative, empathic and collaborative functions. The paper thus concludes that the visuals' representative, interactive and compositional systems synergise to create an all-inclusive anti-FGM global movement than an agitative one.
