A COMPARATIVE MULTIMODAL STYLISTIC STUDY OF SELECTED COVER PAGES OF THE NEWSWATCH TIMES AND THE TELL MAGAZINES; IDEOLOGY, GRAPHOLOGY, AND THE MEDIA

ABSTRACT

This research is a comparative multimodal stylistic study of selected cover pages of two Nigerian news magazines – The Newswatch Times Magazine and The TELL Magazine. Using Norgaard‟s multimodal stylistics approach, this study analyses how the multimodal stylistic resources – colours, images, graphological devices and lexical items displayed on the selected cover pages either convey meaning possibilities or ideological insights. Ten cover pages from The TELL Magazine and six from The Newswatch Times Magazine were selected and analysed. It was found that both magazines applied rich multimodal stylistic resources and graphological devices on the selected cover pages to portray meaning-making and ideological reflection on the aspects of economy, security, politics and public administration in Nigeria. The research explains how colours, imagery, graphology and other linguistic and literary elements found on the selected cover pages carry meaning potentiality and ideological deduction. Both magazines contain identical elements of multimodal stylistics and conventional magazine features in reflecting ideology and meaning interpretation. Yet, there are little variances of style (magazine features) observed on the cover pages studied which do not affect meaning potentiality or ideological decoding. These comprise of the positions of the masthead, ISBN number, issue number, volume, and date. Symbolically speaking, the two magazines either criticise or favour the present government in one way or another regarding polices related to economy, security, politics and other aspects of human endeavours.              

 

A COMPARATIVE MULTIMODAL STYLISTIC STUDY OF SELECTED COVER PAGES OF THE NEWSWATCH TIMES AND THE TELL MAGAZINES; IDEOLOGY, GRAPHOLOGY, AND THE MEDIA

 

CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

1.1       INTRODUCTION

This chapter is the introductory section of the research, which consists of background to the study, brief on the selected magazines, basic terms related to this study. Other aspects of the introductory chapter include statement of the problem, aim and objectives of the study, research questions, significance of the study, as well as scope and limitation.

1.2       BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

This study seeks to carry out a comparative multimodal stylistic analysis of selected cover pages of The Newswatch Times Magazine (International Edition) and The TELL Magazine, which cover some editions from January to December 2016. Multimodal stylistics is a fairly new branch of stylistics which aims to expand the modes of language and media to which stylistic analyses can be applied. In other words, it sets out to account for the creation of meaning in both literary and nonliterary discourses by paying particular attention to semiotic modes than the strictly or general sense of meaning-possibility attached to writing or verbal aspect of a language. In another notion, it advocates meaning-making from a merger of the elements within semiotics and writing system for the stylistic study of a given text.

The increase in the use of digital devices in the conveyance and analysis of human communication has led to an emergent interest in the modes of human communication other than the speech and writing systems. The verbal, along with the visual, is now generally recognised as having some bearing on meaning-making possibilities and worthy of close analysis across a variety of contexts (Lyons, 2016:6).  In this way, the wide-ranging acceptances of technology and new media by many people have foregrounded the multimodal character of communication; more especially in the print media. As such, meaning-making has always been constructed multimodally through the presentation and use of semiotic resources via different styles and ideologies. Lyons (2016:6) submits that, „these resources are often referred to as modes and the theoretical approach concerned with their use in communication is known as multimodal analyses‟.  In this view, multimodal approach can be described as the concept which posits that meaning is being constructed not only through the traditional idea attached to writing system, but it also includes other aspects of language such as semiotics; colour, images, typography layout, book cover among other linguistic and non-linguistic features.

According to Lyons (2016:6), multimodal studies are based on three main assumptions;  (i) it is assumed that communication always involves the use of multiple modes (speech, writing, gestures, colours, images, typographies and others), (ii) meaning is constructed through selection and configuration of different modes in interactions. (iii) Elements and resources applied by interactants are socially moulded over time to create a shared cultural sense of the way in which they can convey meaning. It is important to note that, the above cited principles guiding multimodal studies are presented alongside language style and ideology of a writer or speaker. To ascertain the degree and effects of these principles in meaning-making possibilities of multimodal texts, this study embarks on a comparative multimodal stylistic analysis of some aspects of multimodalities portrayed on the selected cover pages of The Newswatch Time and The TELL Magazines, with a view to investigating the uses and effects of the identified multimodal resources in meaning construction and decoding of ideology.

Magazine covers are multimodal texts designed to draw the attention of potential readers and, or possibly give stylistic, ideological and semantic insights into the text in question.  However, magazine covers are universal and deep-seated in a society with certain ideologies, yet, they are still relatively unexplored genre within the field of multimodality. The importance of colours, images, graphics and other aspects of semiotics/multimodal stylistics portrayed on magazine cover pages serve as yardstick in terms of their contribution to meaning-making and decoding of different ideologies. Kress and van Leeuwen (2006:67) recognise the importance of these semiotic modes and state that, „the important role of images, colours or graphics on contemporary newspapers, magazines, public relations materials, advertisements and other various kinds of books cannot be disregarded‟ in linguistic, stylistic, as well as ideological analysis of multimodal texts.

1.3        Brief on the Selected Magazines

The Newswatch Times Magazine was initially a Nigerian weekly news magazine, but later became a monthly news magazine published by the Newswatch Times Limited, Lagos, Nigeria. „It was founded by some Nigerian journalists namely; Dele Giwa, Ray Ekpu, Dan Agbese and

Yakubu Mohammed in 1984, and published the first edition of its publication on 28^th January, 1985‟ (Uko, 2004:). The company headquarters is situated at Broad Street, Lagos, Nigeria. As part of its impact and achievements in the print media discourse in Nigeria, Jeter (1996) reports that „A 1989 description of the magazine said, it changes the format of print media journalism in Nigeria and introduced bold writing and investigative formats to news reporting in Nigeria‟. He further states that „as at 1996 the magazine was said to have a circulations of about 150, 000 copies in Africa, Europe and North America‟. According to Ajaero (2011:2);

On the 8^th of May, 2011, it was announced that 51% of the shares of Newswatch Communication Limited had been purchased by Global Media Mirror Limited, owned by Jimoh Ibrahim. He had taken over as the executive chairman replacing Alex Akinyele, Bala Dan Abu, the executive editor of The Newswatch Times Magazine given the responsibility to build up the editorial team‟ of the company.

 

The magazine portrays viewpoints, reports and ideologies on issues ranging from politics, economics, education, health, security, law, culture among other aspects of human endeavours from different works of life and backgrounds within and outside the Nigeria.

‘The TELL Magazine is an independent Nigerian weekly magazine established in 1991, with its headquarters situated at Berger, in Lagos‟ (John & Akinkurolere, 2013:1). It published its first edition on 15^th April, 1991. The magazine features political, social, economic and religious situations of Nigeria with national and international coverage. According to Olamide and Segun (2014:1), TELL Magazine is one of the prominent news magazines in Nigeria. It has gained widespread recognition across the globe to an extent that it has won several awards for a portrayal of critical social, economic and political issues of the nation. Akinkurolere and Kumuyi (2013) cited in Olamide & Segun, (2014:2) state that:

TELL Magazine is a major news magazine in Nigeria, at present; it is in both print and digital forms. Also, the magazine has gained national and international recognition, and different people subscribed to it from all works of life especially politicians, academics, administrators, lawyers and judges.

 

They further submit that, TELL Magazine has continued to provide up -to -date insightful news as well as creating in – depth investigative feature stories based on social, political and religious situations of Nigeria in particular and Africa in general.

It is pertinent to note that English language is the singular language of The Newswatch Times and The TELL Magazines as there are no versions in other languages yet. The language of politics, economics, security, religion and other disciplines differ from the language of media, at the same time there are variations even within the various aspects of the media discourse. Nowadays the media employ varieties of ideologies, linguistic and paralinguistic features to communicate; these include multimodality, social semiotics and graphology among others. Moreover,  the media has now emerged as the dominant communication channel which attracts wide range of public interest using different aspects of language and ideologies as tools of conveying ideas and thoughts from a particular point of view in a given place, period and situation. As such, language serves as the most vital tool in man‟s existence. Thus, in order to explicate how human language functions in conjunction with style and ideology, linguists have viewed it in different perspectives.

 

1.4       Basic Terms Related to this Study

Elfrilder (2015) explains „style is one‟s way of doing a thing. It can be of teaching, writing, walking, dressing, speaking, acting, and so on, which are influenced by different ideologies such as knowledge, background, religion, culture and history‟. However, Language style can be described as a way of writing and speech or utterance which is shaped by means of conscious and intentional collection of words, systematic patterning and implementation of linguistic and extra-linguistic means with regard to the theme, function, situation, writer`s intention and content of expression. Authors usually make selection of a language style from a range of lexical and syntactic features according to the purpose of the message. They also employ the use of figurative language to make readers feel the literariness in their works of arts. However, in some cases writers deviate from the standard norms of writing system to achieve stylistics, this is termed as „stylistic deviation‟ it is a situation where writers (authors) consciously break the laid down rules of grammar, syntax, graphology, morphology, phonology, semantics and other linguistics and literary elements to convey message or ideology; is it applicable to drama, prose, poetry and other non-literary texts.

According to Syal and Jindal (2010:81) “Stylistics is that branch of linguistics which takes the language of literary texts [and non-literary texts] as its objects of study”. Therefore, stylistics is concerned with the analysis and depiction of linguistic landscapes of a text in relation to their meaning.  Analysing a text stylistically is unlike doing a ‘literary’ analysis, as it needs to be much more objective and rooted in factual aspects of linguistic elements within literary and non-literary texts. With stylistics, we aim to explain how the words of a text create the feelings and responses that we get when we read them. Thus, appropriate application of literary styles in a text shows the linguistic repertoire of a writer. In the words of Jeffries and McIntyre (2010: i), “stylistics is the linguistic study of style in language. It aims to account for how texts project meaning and why readers respond to texts in varieties of angles”. In their views, stylistics can be described as the linguistic analysis of style, which aims at providing how text presents meaning with the help of stylistic devices, how readers respond to text in different perspectives in their interpretation and study of both literary and non-literary texts.

Due to rapid scientific and technological advancement, the ways of human communication have also changed. People live in an advanced level where visual images, colours, graphics and other non-verbal elements are becoming more significant parts of human communication, as well as encoding of ideology and meaning-making in a given discourse. Kress (2003:59) posits that „nowadays people are exposed to texts that contain elaborate visual images, unusual narrative structures, complex design elements and unique formats of verbal and non-verbal

communications‟ this shows the levels of interaction among people through different modes of communication, ideologies and various semiotic resources, which indicates that meaning is constructed not only through written language alone, but also through semiotics, ideology or integrated linguistic and non-linguistic resources. Kress (2000) cited in Liu (2013:1259) states that, “… the combined use of different modes to create meaning has gone to the point that it is now possible that when making sense of a text, even of its linguistic parts alone, analysts have to have a clear idea that some other features might contribute to the meaning creation of a text”. Similarly, the analysis of a multimodal text has gone beyond the traditional cognitive strategies, because images and texts are being integrated in unique ways, as analysts might need new skills and strategies for meaning-making in dealing with these multimodal texts due to the scientific and technological advancement. From the foregoing, there is the need to analyse “how the modes of image, [colour] and writing appear together, how they are designed to appear together and how they are to be read together” (Kress, 2003:61), these are evident on the cover pages of magazines and other multimodal texts.

Most of the stylistic features used by authors in their texts play an important role between writing and ideology, as they contribute to the creation of mood and comprehension, meaning and add clarity to relieve the dullness of reading long passages. As such, Stylistics attempts to help those who do not know these devices and techniques not to lose comprehension and fail to fully grasp what is really being conveyed by authors. To this end, stylistics is very important in both literary and non-literary texts, because each text represents an individual‟s use of language which reflects his unique personality, ideology and style.

Asghar (2014:230) states „ideology has its roots in the Marxist notion of false consciousness which emphasises that material and institutional processes in capitalist society mislead the proletariat over the nature of capitalism‟. Dellinger (1995 cited in Bayram, 2010:27) submits that „texts are selected and organised in syntactic forms, that is, „content – structure‟ reflect the ideological organisation of a particular area of social life‟. In this sense, ideologies are produced and reflected in varieties of discourses. „The main idea behind an ideology is to offer change‟ within individual personalities or societies (Asghar, 2014:230). He further states that ideologies are non-concrete beliefs which can be, or are applied to reality of different phenomena of individuals to certain viewpoints. Fairclough (1992 cited in Asghar, 2014:230) explicates that „the function of ideology is to construct texts which constantly and cumulatively impose assumptions upon the interpreter and the producer, typically without being aware of them. This indicates that ideological assumptions are thoughts that producers‟ of texts consciously or unconsciously employ in the perception of their social knowledge and these are what an interpreter decodes during textual and interpretative analysis of a text. Fairclough (1992 cited in Asghar, 2014:231) further explains that „ideologies are most effective when they are most invisible‟ and that „invisibility‟ in this sense „is achieved when they are brought to discourse, implicitly leading the interpreter to textualise the world in a particular way‟.

From the foregoing, arguably, certain discourses might involve hidden ideology, more especially, conscious ideologies which are embedded in a text and “the task of critical discourse analysis is to expose and critique those ideologies to emancipate the readers of such text from any vested interest or agenda of various groups and individuals” (Asghar, 2014:231). He further explores „… it is important to expose hidden ideologies because hidden ideologies are more effective and, therefore readers need to be aware of these before being influenced unknowingly‟.

Multimodal stylistics deals with meaning comprehension from the combination of elements within writing system and semiotics, as well as graphology. It is possible that ideology can be embedded via these elements by authors which could be decoded by analysts during textual analysis. Dellinger (1995 cited in Bayram, 2010:27) argues that „texts are selected and organised in syntactic forms, that is, „content – structure‟ reflect the ideological organisation of a particular area of social life‟. This arguably illustrates the mixture of image and language as an indicator to both writers and readers of multimodal texts to create the projected meaning possibilities and ideological deduction. In this sense, ideologies are produced and reflected in varieties of discourses. Based on this view, this study (multimodal stylistics) examines either the conscious or unconscious ideological discourses that are reflected in the selected cover pages through semiotics or graphological analysis for possible meaning inference and ideological

interpretation.

1.5       STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Due to the advancement of science and technology, the modes of human communication and meaning interpretation have also moved from the traditional meaning-making mostly attached to written text to include other aspects such as social semiotics, graphology and multimodality. Visual systems of meaning construction offer different resources and potentials for meaning making in both literary and non-literary texts. Thus, readers need to acquaint themselves with a range of ways to make sense and read visual images alongside with written text to decode meaning. Moreover, a wide range of semiotic resources has been used by critics to construct meaning. Hence, due to the importance of cover-page of news magazines in the print media in reflecting ideology and meaning potentials, it deserves to be given attention. However, the concentrations of stylistic studies have dwelled mainly, but not solely, on literary texts. As Busse (2010:468a) has stated, „… stylistic applications to non-literary texts are not as numerous as those using literature (literary texts) as their source text of investigation‟. This view signals that there is little gap in stylistic studies of non-literary texts. Nonetheless, there have been studies carried out in recent time, either on multimodal stylistics or multimodal discourse analysis on the cover pages of different magazines and editorials, as well as other aspects of the print media ranging from advertising, religion, politics, and security, among others. For instance, Mei-lin (2005) conducts a multimodal discourse analysis of advertisements of Hong Kong charity organizations. Soibi (2008) has explored „Obasanjo‟s Failed Third Term Bid‟ in ThisDay and The Punch newspapers as well as The Newswatch and TELL Magazines with the aid of the systematic sampling technique. Similar to Mei-lin‟s (2005) study, Olowu (2012) examines the multimodal discourse analysis of Women Mirror Magazine, in which he describes and analyses the modes employed in religious magazine and how they aid in meaning-comprehension, John and Akinkurolere (2013) explore on the impact of visual aspects of language in meaning-making in line with semantic indicators in The TELL Magazine. In another study, Robert (2013) makes a critical analysis of the language of advertisement in selected newspapers and magazines; he examines aspects of graphology and lexis of The Nation Newspaper and The Newswatch Magazine respectively. Olamide and Segun (2014) studied effects of speech acts of editorial comments of The TELL Magazine in conveying meaning. Despite attempts at the study of Newspapers and Magazines, there seem to be no much effort to apply multimodal approaches to cover pages of The Newswatch Times and The TELL Magazines, with or without recourse to social semiotics, ideology, linguistic or paralinguistic elements.

However, it is pertinent to note that the research theories and methodologies of stylistic analysis are equaly applicable to the study of non-literary texts as adopted in the above cited examples. Busse (2010:468a) explains that, „… the research framework of stylistics, as well as its methodological and theoretical basis, can be applied in the analysis of non-literary texts‟. She further states that „the concept of foregrounding and the essential stylistic question of „how a text means what it does‟ are crucial to the identification of meanings, styles, and discourses of non-

literary texts‟.

It is against this background that, this research carried out a comparative multimodal stylistic study of selected cover pages of The Newswatch Times and The TELL Magazines to demonstrate how semiotics – colours, imageries, typographies, layout, graphology and ideology aid in creating meaning of a non-literary text such as magazine and other multimodal texts, than the strictly or general idea of meaning-making and ideological deduction attached to only writing or verbal aspect of a language. In other words, this research seeks to fill the above gap by making a further expansion on the stylistic study of non-literary texts within the premises of multimodal stylistics and social semiotics approaches as well as graphology.

 

1.6       AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

This research aims at examining a comparative multimodal stylistic study and scrutiny of some aspects of semiotic resources portrayed on the selected cover pages of The Newswatch

Times and The TELL Magazines. Thus, the specific objectives of this study are to;

1. identify some of the multimodal stylistic resources portrayed on the selected cover pages of The Newswatch Times and The TELL Magazines with their ideological effects on meaning making.
2. explain how the identified multimodal stylistic resources portrayed on the selected cover pages of The Newswatch Times and The TELL Magazines can either reflect ideology or portray meaning-making.
3. explicate how the semiotic items such as colours, images and graphics portrayed on the selected cover pages of The Newswatch Times and The TELL Magazines together with other linguistic and literary stylistic items contribute to meaning-making and reflecting of ideology.
4. compare and contrast the extent of ideological decoding and meaning potentials of the identified multimodal resources portrayed on the selected cover pages of The Newswatch Times and The TELL Magazines for this study.

1.7       RESEARCH QUESTIONS

This study seeks to answer the following questions:

1. What kinds of multimodal stylistic resources are portrayed on the selected cover pages of The Newswatch Times and The TELL Magazines, and what are their ideological effects on the text?
2. How do the identified multimodal stylistic resources portrayed on the selected cover pages of The Newswatch Times and The TELL Magazines reflect ideology or portray meaning-making?
3. How do the semiotic items such as colours, images and graphics portrayed on the selected cover pages of The Newswatch Times and The TELL Magazines together with other linguistic items contribute to meaning-making and reflecting of ideology?
4. To what extent do the identified multimodal stylistic resources portrayed on the selected cover pages of The Newswatch Times and The TELL Magazines decode ideology and meaning potentials?

1.8       SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

In recent times, image and language are two inseparable elements in the print media, specifically, the contemporary magazines in reflecting ideology and meaning potentials. This arguably portrays the mixture of image and language as an indicator to both writers and readers of multimodal texts to create the projected meaning possibilities. Jewitt and Kress (2003) explain that mode is a regularised set of resources such as language, gesture, image, music, sound-effect, which construct the meaning of text. This shows that texts which contain various semiotic modes such as colour, language, image and graphs are theoretically considered as multimodal texts. Multimodality is concerned with social semiotics. Hence, „social semiotics deals with the role of individual modes and the relationship between semiotics elements and also the elaboration of the principle entities of multimodal text‟ Kress (2010). In other words, each semiotic mode not only undertakes its own role but is able to complement other modes in relation with each other to make an effective multimodal communication.

This study will contribute to the evolving interest, especially in multimodal stylistics, social semiotics and graphology, possibly, how both written and semiotic language styles contribute to meaning creation and comprehension of non-literary texts. By analysing and understanding the roles played by the various multimodal stylistic devices and semiotic resources portrayed on the selected cover pages of The Newswatch Times and The TELL Magazines, this study will add a new dimension to the studies conducted on the magazines. It will also serve as a reference material for future researchers who wish to investigate further, how stylistic devices and other visual aspects of texts can reflect certain ideology or meaning intrepretation.

 

1.9       SCOPE AND LIMITATION

Linguistic analyses of non-literary texts can be explored through various aspects, such as discourse analysis, lexico-semantics, semiotics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, phonology, and syntax. Also, there are branches of stylistics within the discipline which attract attention of critics and these include; multimodal stylistics, cognitive stylistics, narrative stylistics, discourse stylistics, corpus stylistics, pedagogical stylistics, feminist stylistics, historical stylistics and pragmatic stylistics.

However, this study is limited to the selected cover pages of The Newswatch Times and The TELL Magazines. The study focuses on multimodal stylistic analysis of the cover pages of the selected magazines in order to highlight and explicate the multimodal stylistic features such as, layout, typography, colours, images and other aspects of multimodality, as well as other elements of social semiotics and graphology portrayed on the selected cover pages and how these elements can reveal some underlying ideology and meaning possibilities. Ten cover pages from The TELL Magazine and six from The Newswatch Times Magazine which covers editions from

January to December 2016 were analysed. The reason for analysing six cover pages of The Newswatch Times Magazine against ten cover pages from The TELL Magazine is as a result of irregular publication of The Newswatch Times Magazines by The Newswatch Times Limited since 2016.  The company publishes the magazine based on a demand or request from individuals or organisations. For this reason, there were no publications in September and November, 2016. As a result, efforts made to get ten magazines from the company and some national libraries proved abortive.

A COMPARATIVE MULTIMODAL STYLISTIC STUDY OF SELECTED COVER PAGES OF THE NEWSWATCH TIMES AND THE TELL MAGAZINES; IDEOLOGY, GRAPHOLOGY, AND THE MEDIA. GET MORE MASS COMMUNICATION PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS

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