Publication: Political semiotics of national campaign posters and pictorial representation: Thailand's 2011 general elections
2
Issued Date
2014-01-01
Resource Type
ISSN
16133692
00371998
00371998
Other identifier(s)
2-s2.0-84903194431
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Mahidol University
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SCOPUS
Bibliographic Citation
Semiotica. Vol.199, (2014), 269-296
Suggested Citation
William J. Jones Political semiotics of national campaign posters and pictorial representation: Thailand's 2011 general elections. Semiotica. Vol.199, (2014), 269-296. doi:10.1515/sem-2013-0128 Retrieved from: https://repository.li.mahidol.ac.th/handle/123456789/33185
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Title
Political semiotics of national campaign posters and pictorial representation: Thailand's 2011 general elections
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Abstract
The 2011 Thai general election was seen by many Thai political analysts as a watershed moment that would hopefully be the tipping point of socio-political reconciliation in the drawn out political struggle that has characterized Thai politics since 2005. The highly contested nature of Thai politics becomes salient when viewing campaign posters pictorial and linguistic content. The most controversial of which was the "Vote No" campaign taken on by the For Heaven and Earth Party, which is a political party nominally associated with Thailand's conservative People's Alliance for Democracy. This study seeks to unwrap and decode the semiotics of this party's political campaign posters in Thailand's 2011 general election by providing cultural context to the application of multimodal discourse analysis and critical semiotics framework. I will argue that the "Vote No" campaign and its campaign posters depicting politicians as animals is a continuing political discourse of conservative Buddhist philosophers/scholars that reaches back to the 1980s. Furthermore, the "Vote No" campaign seeks to create dissonance and reinstate conservative rule via monarchial and/or military intervention by creating political deadlock thereby undermining democratic rights and rule by the exercising of democratic rights of voting, thus disenfranchising citizens by their own hand.