NATION, GENDER AND SPACE: SEMIOTIC ANLAYSIS OF FERTILITY CAMPAIGN IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

This study explores how the emplacement of I Love Children’s 2016 Fertility Campaign in the public transportation field influences the campaign message(s) using visual documentation of their emplacement in MRT spaces. A combination of visual analysis using Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006) visual grammar framework and a spatial analysis using Scollon and Scollon’s (2003) geosemiotics framework is utilised to analyse how the campaign messages are expressed and what meanings are imparted to the campaign messages by the location of their placement. The study’s central findings are that the campaign perpetuates a stereotypical unbalanced power dynamic by depicting men as actors and women as goals and an overall compromise of audiences’ agency over their own bodies due to misinformation by the campaign. The study also found that the spaces of the MRT system in Singapore are semiotically constructed institutional spaces with high government control and that campaigns addressing issues of national concern gain legitimacy from the space’s existing association with the government. The study is significant because through this spatial association with the state, the campaign is made part of the nation’s ongoing narrative surrounding the crisis of reproduction, showing that the study of space can be used to great effect in offering new insights to the analysis of semiotic objects and beyond the usual viewer-creator analysis when semiotic objects are analysed in a discourse vacuum.