Covid-19 in The British Media
a multimodal analysis of public health advertisements from the pandemic outbreak
Keywords:
Systemic functional Linguistics, Grammar of visual design, COVID-19, Public health posters, UKAbstract
Based on Systemic Functional Linguistics and the Grammar of Visual Design, this article analyzes public health advertisements in the UK, from different moments during the COVID-19 outbreak (February to April 2020). Considering the verbal and visual meanings, results show a similar major use of verbs that instruct and recommend people’s actions: While Poster 1 portrays broader information regarding sanitizing, Posters 2 and 3 instruct people to be vigilant. Visually, Posters 1 and 2 use green, indicating health and safety, and illustrate the presence of the virus, while Poster 3 foregrounds the colors red, orange and yellow, signaling caution regarding the Coronavirus-19.
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