A social semiotic analysis of the verbal, non-verbal and visual rhetoric of the 2009 and 2014 African National Congress (A.N.C.) political television advertisements : a comparative qualitative content analysis study

Abstract

Political advertising on television is a relatively “new” phenomenon in South African general election campaigns (circa 2008). The purpose of this study is to analyse and compare the three sampled 2009 and 2014 African National Congress (A.N.C.) political television advertisements, with a specific focus on the verbal, non-verbal and visual rhetoric in the communication of election campaign messages. To achieve this goal, the study reviewed literature in the subject of rhetoric and post-colonial perspectives in the areas of Afrocentrism and Eurocentrism, focusing specifically on the seminal work of the Afro-centrist, Molefi Asante, and the anti-Western-centric scholar, Samin Amin. The study uses social semiotics (as both a theoretical approach and a research methodological framework). As a theoretical approach, the social semiotic approach was conceptualised by Valentin Voloshinov (1973) and Michael Halliday (1978), and it argues for the creation of social meaning within a text and within a society. The study focuses on the former, the creation of meaning within a text, that is, the content of the three sampled political

advertisements. As a research framework, the approach was adapted by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen (1996). The study favours their social semiotic research method which provide the interpreter/researcher with dimensions, or “tools’, with which to explicate and deconstruct textual meanings. Thus, in this study, social semiotics as part of the broader field of discourse analysis, was used to deconstruct the latent and manifest ideologies of the non-verbal, verbal and visual rhetoric of two 2009 and one 2014 A.N.C. political television advertisements. Using this combined theoretical framework (rhetoric, social semiotics and Afrocentrism and Eurocentrism), and, research approach, it could be determined whether the verbal, non-verbal and visual rhetoric of these three A.N.C. political television commercials represents Afrocentric and/or Eurocentric post- colonial

The main findings of the study show that both the visual and verbal rhetoric of the sampled A.N.C. political television commercials represents a combination of a varying ideological constructs, namely the “nationalist”; “socialist”; “liberal feminist”; and, “liberal capitalist ideologies” (cf. Haywood 1998; Thompson 2003). Furthermore, the findings of the study point out that the verbal, non-verbal and visual rhetoric of the selected A.N.C. political television commercials, are neither exclusively Afrocentric nor Eurocentric in nature. Both post-colonial perspectives are represented, in varying degrees, in the sampled A.N.C. commercials. The study makes a significant contribution to the political communication landscape in South Africa, in that, it is an exclusively qualitative content analysis, as opposed to previous, quantitative content-analysis studies (cf. Fourie 2008; Fourie & Froneman 2003; Fourie & Froneman 2001). It is also important to note that as far as can be determined, that this is the first study to use social semiotics, as either a theoretical framework or a research method. The key limitation of the study is that, it only focuses on three purposely sampled A.N.C. election campaign television advertisements, and does not include the political television advertisements of opposition political parties, such as the Democratic Alliance.