Aproximación multimodal a la imagen de las/os empobrecidas/os: análisis multimodal de las portadas en una muestra de las revistas de Intermón Oxfam

Abstract

This article intends to approach the way NGOs represent the population in poor and rich countries and their own representation as NGOs of Development. Our corpus consists of all the issues from the Intermón Oxfam’s magazine called Revista IO published in 2012. We will offer a detailed analysis of the covers because this is the first page seen by the readers and because this is the way in which the NGO introduces itself. Critical discourse analysis, specifically the model proposed by van Leeuwen (2008) and Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) visual grammar will be used in order to provide a detailed analysis of the covers and to observe the main visual characteristics used for presenting people from poor countries in a sample from Intermón Oxfam’s magazines. After analysing the said covers we conclude that this NGO creates a dichotomy between producers of raw materials and handicrafts, located in poor countries, and consumers of these products, located in rich countries. Thus, the relations between them appear mediated by money and not by universal values such as the equality or social justice.