Multimodality, politics and ideology

Abstract

This journal’s editorial statement is clear that political discourse should be studied not only as regards parliamentary type politics. In this introduction we argue precisely for the need to pay increasing attention to the way that political ideologies are infused into culture more widely, in entertainments media, software, administrative processes, children’s apps, healthcare and even office furniture design. We point to the way that there have been massive shifts away from traditional state forms of politics to the rule of neoliberalism and the power of the corporation which, like the former regime of power, requires meanings and identities which can hold them in place. We explain the processes by which critical multimodal discourse analysis can best draw out this ideology as it is realized through different semiotics resources.