Visual Metafunction In Cigarette A Mild Advertisements: A Multimodal Analysis

Abstract

Departing from multimodal approach, this study attempted to analyze the different semiotic resources used by A Mild, a giant Indonesian cigarette brand from Sampoerna, and to realize how these resources convey interpretations and messages in their billboard ads. The data of the study are three A Mild billboard advertisement images that analyzed using the visual grammar framework proposed by Kress and Leeuwen (2006) that consist of representational function, interactive function, and compositional function. The findings revealed that A Mild designed their billboard advertisements to create movements as to affect the viewer’s emotion through the implicit use of representational features that utilized processes like narrative and conceptual, interactive features. They are realized in the gaze, power, social distance, and modality. In terms of the compositional features, they employed the important and less important elements on the image. It can be concluded that the involvement of the verbal elements on the image affect the interpretation of the image.