Tracing relevance beyond codes and across modes

Abstract Drawing on Relevance Theory, the paper sketches out a framework that accounts for inference-making in creative multimodal texts, taking advocacy campaign posters as its case study. The analysis shows that in each poster semiotic resources are employed to create a micro-narrative exemplifying actors affected by a sociopolitical problem, whose function is to create assumptions against which a higher-order intention is recognized. The text-internal relevance within the micro-narrative is optimized by combining verbal and visual elements to communicate multimodal explicatures and implicatures. The visual elements are employed to invoke non-propositional effects that activate perceptual mechanisms to maximize emotional attachment with the issue advocated for. These non-propositional effects communicated by visual connotation carriers are essential, rather than extra, elements, contributing to the understanding of the propositional meaning communicated at the text-external level. The analysis shows that an inferential approach to multimodality is indispensable to account for (non)propositional content across different modes.