On the issue of applying affordance theory in the study of polycode texts

This study is dedicated to the central role of polycode texts (such as political cartoons, social advertisements, digital posters, etc.) in ideological communication and emotional mobilization of society in the digital age. It indicates that traditional linguistics has long been limited to a monocodal paradigm, making it difficult to systematically explain the synergistic mechanism of numerous symbolic resources—visual, linguistic, spatial, and color resources—in political texts. Therefore, it introduces the theory of "affordance" from the field of ecopsychology into the analysis of polycode texts. As a result, the theory of affordance in ecological psychology is innovatively integrated into the multimodal text analysis. The subject of this research is the problems of applying the theory of affordance to the study of polycode texts. The object of this research is polycode texts. Its goal is to identify the mechanisms by which the structural-compositional features of polycode texts determine the interpretative activity of the recipient. The methodology of the study includes a general method of analysis, critical discourse analysis, and a descriptive-analytical method. It has been established that the creators of polycode texts deliberately activate certain strategies of meaning-making through visual affordance (for example, via visual effects); the activation of collective memory through precedent phenomena (for instance, precedent names); and stimulation through tropes of interpretations related to attributing certain axiological characteristics to the depicted content (rational-irrational/absurd; contemplative-active; self-preservation-self-destruction). This fact indicates that the structural elements of the text are not arbitrary but serve as instruments that implicitly regulate cognitive processes of reception. Such an approach opens new perspectives in studying the property of interpersonality, organizing the polycode text in terms of its intended accessibility for understanding. The scientific novelty of the research lies in considering polycode texts as a cognitive environment from the perspective of affordance theory.