Laughing into Compliance: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Humour as A Persuasive Strategy in Selected Nigerian Health Awareness Posters

This study examines the use of humour as a persuasive strategy in selected Nigerian public health awareness posters. It specifically investigates how verbal and visual resources combine to construct humour as a persuasive strategy. The data for the study comprise sixteen purposively selected posters from the Nigerian Center for Disease Control (NCDC) official telegram handle, Rivers State University Teaching Hospital (RSUTH), University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH), and Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH). These were grouped into six sub-headings and six posters were finally selected and subjected to qualitative analysis with insights from Schopenhauer’s (1844) incongruity theory of humour and Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) grammar of visual design. The study reveals that humour is predominantly subtle and is realized through visual incongruity, metaphorical representation, exaggeration, and playful comparisons. These humorous resources attract attention, simplify health information, and support message retention. However, humour is not employed uniformly. It is varied according to the sensitivity of the health issue. The study concludes that humour, when integrated with effective multimodal design, constitutes an effective multimodal persuasive strategy in Nigerian health communication.