STRATEGIES TO GRAB ATTENTION: A MULTIMODAL CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF ONLINE SELLING POSTS

Kittima Taibanguai; Sumittra Suraratdecha

Authors

Kittima Taibanguai
Sumittra Suraratdecha

Keywords:

modes of communication, Multimodal Discourse Analysis, Multimodality, online language, social media marketing

Abstract

The present study is a multimodal discourse analysis of the popular online selling posts purposively selected from a university’s online marketplace in Thailand. Adopting five Modes of Communication (The New London Group, 1996), this study aims to reveal sellers’ preferred characteristics of the online selling posts, that is, verbal and nonverbal communicative strategies in an online trading platform in the disruption era. The data comprises visual storytellers’ 120 online selling posts that contain multimodal elements. The findings suggest that six Moves and 10 main author tones are adopted to construct the selling captions following a textual mode. The features and types of objects, symbols, icons, colors, and sizes are found to be diverse in a visual mode, as is the organization of those elements in a spatial mode. Gestures, facial expressions, and feelings in presenting products play a key role in a gestural mode. For an aural mode, the content-related background music and songs are often noticed, except for the sound effects. The results of the current study not only reveal practical suggestions and devices for creating online selling content in terms of online marketing but also online linguistic structures favored by well-received sellers.

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