Multimodal Means of Representing Pragmatic Potential in Advertising Discourse

This article is an attempt to study multimodal means used to reveal pragmatic potential of advertising posts in the social network VKontakte. In the paper we explore the concept of multimodality and multimodal text as a semiotic unity. We proceed from the fact that such a unity is achieved through coherence of social context. An advertising text is understood as a multimodal complex in which information is transmitted through a variety of semiotic codes which are socially and culturally determined. These codes serve as semiotic resources to produce meaning. We claim that advertising messages in the social network VKontakte are a form of a media text whose inherent characteristics exceed verbal means and possess such features as coherence, recontextuality, multilevelness, multimodality and multimediality. We have used a multimodal discourse analysis, which is in line with social semiotics concepts and works by G. Kress. He argues that the goal of such an analysis is to develop a number of methods which make it possible to study the interaction between social meanings and their polysemiotic representations in a text. The analysis is aimed at exploring four key components: text; context, actions, and interactions of participants in the discourse; the impact of the text and ideology. The research is carried out at the micro and macro levels. At the micro level, a textual analysis of both verbal and non-verbal means was conducted. At the macro level, we singled out discursive strategies employed to influence potential customers and determined relationships between directly observable (verbal and non-verbal units) and implicit ideas these units convey. The results reveal that cognitive strategies encode interpretations of cultural experience and forms of social interaction. Despite the importance of the verbal semiotic code, non-verbal means are an essential part of advertising messages that form a multidimensional unity of all the semiotic codes. Visual representational structures serve to communicate such important socio-cultural codes as PART OF OUR WORLD VS OTHERS (INVOVEMENT VS DETACHMENT), SOCIAL DISTANCE, POWER. All this allows us to create an integral image of the thermal resort “Baden-Baden” and intensifies the degree of pragmatic impact on potential customers.