This article probes into the semiotic construction of three posters used in
Singapore?s national campaigns: the 1983 Productivity, the 1996 Speak
Mandarin and the 1995 Courtesy Campaign posters. By unpacking the
verbal messages and visual images encoded within these three posters
and, more importantly, the interplay between them, the article aims to
uncover possible ideological interests, meanings and implications woven
into the semiotic fabric of the posters. Employing Kress and Van
Leeuwen?s (1990 and 1996) framework of ?reading images?, the three
posters were analysed along the Interpersonal and Ideational dimensions
of meaning-construction. The analysis reveals a series of dissonances,
discontinuities and disjunctures both within the visual imagery itself and
between the visual and the verbal texts, reflecting a substratum of tension
existing among the various socio-political and socio-economic ideologies
projected by the posters. |