LAUSR

Abstract While discourse analysts have demonstrated that interactants use discursive strategies to frame situations and construct identities, few studies have taken multimodal approaches to analyzing important concepts they have developed and implemented (e.g., constructed dialogue). This study aims to fill this gap. My findings about the significant roles that different semiotic resources take on in constructing dialogue demonstrate the importance of using multimodal approaches to analyze such linguistic strategies. I analyze how dialogue is constructed multimodally in political commercials using a variety of semiotic resources. I examine commercials aired during the 2018 election for Kentucky’s Sixth Congressional District, first providing a brief quantitative analysis of the politicians’ advertising campaigns, then analyzing in-depth one ad aired by each candidate. Drawing on Tannen’s (2007) concept of constructed dialogue, Kristeva's (1980) concept intertextuality, and Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1996, 2001) framework of social semiotics, I demonstrate how the advertisements create meaning and construct dialogue multimodally. I illustrate how each campaign voices its opponent to (re)frame their words and construct identities, vilifying the opponent and praising the self. I show that on-screen text, imported video and audio recordings, body movements, discursive constructions, and repetition of these semiotic resources construct dialogue multimodally.