Visual Metadiscourse Analysis on the Malaysian Universities’ Digital Promotional Materials

Studies in the use of textual metadiscourse in the academic context have been explored extensively but not for the visual elements. Hence, this study extends Hyland’s (2005) metadiscourse framework to the visual mode, examining how interactive and interactional metadiscourse markers are realized in the Malaysian public and private universities’ digital promotional materials. Utilising mixed-method approach, this study examined the frequency distribution of the visual metadiscourse in the digital promotional materials across university types and this is followed by and a more detailed analysis of the visual elements. The findings reveal that Malaysian private universities employed more visual metadiscourse in their digital promotional materials compared to the Malaysian public universities. Interactional metadiscourse was also found to highly used than the interactive metadiscourse for both university types that suggests a disproportionate preference of the universities in engaging with the prospective students instead of enhancing the organizational elements of the text. By highlighting the strategic deployment of visual metadiscourse, this study contributes to a broader understanding of how institutions construct their visual preference, credibility, and identity in their digital promotional materials from persuasion perspective. Thus, this study suggests the university content designer’s, marketing and admission departments not to disregard the visual metadiscourse in their promotional communication.