Beyond Multimodality: A Study of Hidden Discourse on Book Covers of Selected Contemporary African Novels

This qualitative study explored the multimodal modes on the book covers of selected literary texts used in schools in Africa for their communicative purposes. The study was underpinned by Geenen’s (2020) Multimodal Interaction Analysis Theory (MIAT), and five (5) literary book covers were purposively selected and textually analyzed. The findings revealed that the book covers of these literary texts used varied verbal and visual elements, including sentences, noun phrases and adjectives with varied font sizes, capitalization, etc. which have been blended massively with different colour backgrounds and image representations respectively, as they were guided by the three levels of multimodality (of verbal, visual and visual-verbal elements). The findings further unveiled that the images on the book covers skillfully showcased African experiences, cultural beliefs and practices for communicative purposes. Further glance equally revealed that the meanings of the visual elements in these book covers were closely associated with various colour backgrounds and images which in effect represent nature, culture and other stereotypical related issues. The study concluded that the verbal elements on the book-covers serve either as a summary of the massage in the texts or their inherent persuasive elements.