A VISUAL PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF SELECTED AFRICAN DISHES ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Abstract
The relation between visual elements or resources and context, and the way they are
deployed in establishing meaning in different communicative situations is the domain of
visual pragmatics. Pragmaticians over the years researched further on the way context
influences the use of language, and this study extends this principle to the visuality of
African culinary heritage on social media. The study is a visual pragmatic analysis of
selected African dishes on social media”. The data for the study is a purposively selected
set of images of African dishes sourced from various soci al media platforms such as
Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, and. Each image was analyzed to understand the
communicative functions of the visual resources in the data.
In addition, Jacob Mey's Pragmatic Acts Theory and Kress and van Leeuwen’s Visual
Grammar Model were adopted as the theoretical underpinnings for a comprehensive
analysis of this study. The combinationof these two theoretical models provided a
framework for investigating both the pragmatic functions and the visual elements available
in the images. At the end of the analysis, it was discovered that visual resources function
as assertive practs to persuade and inform, and that a high degree of modality is used to
communicate freshness and authenticity. It was also discovered that pragmatic strategies
like Shared Situational Knowledge (SSK), Reference (REF) and Inference (INF) are
deployed to depict "Africaness", and to build cultural identity. Furthermore, the images
employ conceptual representation, and compositional choices like centralized layouts and
eye-level viewpoints to create a personal and intimate connection with the viewer. It is,
therefore, concluded that visual resources play a crucial role in shaping perceptions,
awareness, promotion of African culinary heritage, and reinforcing cultural identity on
social media. It is, therefore, recommended that other visual pragmatic investigation on
other African dishes should be carried out using a combination of pragmatics and other
linguistic theories.
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