The shape of the future – Visual style in multimodal climate communication

Abstract

Organisations, companies and institutions increasingly involve professional graphic designers in their text production practices, whose task it is to imbue texts with visual styles that serve the interests of that organisation, company or institution. This article utilizes a social semiotic framework influenced by cognitive metaphor theory and phenomenological philosophy, in order to explore how shape and movement in such visual styles is used in cases of multimodal climate communication. The material examined consists of three digitally available video-series, two produced by the Norwegian National Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) and one by The Norwegian Egg and Meat Information Office, and all series present claims concerning anthropogenic climate change. The findings illustrate how the use of shape and movement contributes broad collections of affectively oriented meaning potentials – rather than functionalising the texts, they have the potential to increase grounds for engagement and identification, and to associate the texts with various presumptively positive qualities. Implications of these findings are discussed in light of previous research in critical discourse studies and multimodality.