Multimodal Analysis of Election Posters

Purpose. Within the framework of pre-election political communication the poster acts as a dominant means of pre-election campaign, designed to convince a potential voter to visit a polling station and cast his vote for a particular party or candidate on election day. The article characterizes this phenomenon of political communication; describes its main constituent elements; considers the basic features of this polycode phenomenon; presents a detailed linguistic and semiotic analysis of election posters of the leading Russian parties. The relevance of this article is due to its significance for those studying political communication.
Methodology. The empirical material was selected by the method of continuous sampling on the official platforms of the Internet. The research methods include general scientific methods of multimodal analysis, interpretive method, content analysis. The material of the study was election posters of three parties that gained the most votes according to the results of the 2021 elections in Russia (“United Russia” – 49.82%, CPRF – 18.93%, LDPR – .55%).
Results. The types of posters used by the key parties of Russia in the pre-election campaign were considered; the main criteria underlying the multimodal analysis were determined; the distinction features of the pre-election poster as a polycode text were described; a detailed analysis of the design and textual content of pre-election posters was performed.
Scope of the results. The obtained results make a certain contribution to the further study of political communication. The results of the study can be used in the basic course of sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, political science.

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