‘Title gone’: a multimodal appraisal of Nigerian internet users’ visual representation of Arsenal football club

Abstract This paper examines English Premier League (EPL) – related memes with the aim of exploring the way Nigerian football fans express intersubjective opinions about Arsenal Football Club (Arsenal FC). 30 EPL matches related memes, gathered between November 2023 and May 2024 from Nigerian WhatsApp users, were purposively sampled for this study. The memes were subjected to qualitative analysis leveraging Kress and van Leeuwen (2006. Reading images: The grammar of visual design , 2nd edn., London: Routledge) multimodality theory and Martin and White (2005. The language of evaluation: Appraisal in English . London: Palgrave Macmil1an) appraisal system. The findings reveal that Nigerian EPL fans positively/negatively evaluate Arsenal FC through multimodal appraisal resources such as: expressions of affect, salience, social distance, attitude, framing, judgement and appreciation of things. The study further shows that verbal and visual resources in the images work together to evoke the intersubjective positioning extended in the data. The study affirms that text producers effectively utilise multimodal elements to interrogate the various expressions of attitude which Nigerian football fans exhibit towards Arsenal FC in the EPL.