13 March 2019

The Council of Europe’s Human Rights Campaigns: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis

Sole Alba Zollo

Since its creation in 1949, the Council of Europe has concentrated most of its efforts on promoting the protection of human rights. In this field it has proved to be extremely effective, especially during the last years when it has introduced a number of legal initiatives. The Organisation has launched a range of campaigns to raise public awareness, primarily focusing on the Right to Life but also highlighting the importance of social and cultural rights. By investigating the Council of Europe’s most recent public campaigns, this study aims to identify the linguistic and visual means of persuasion used to promote and disseminate human rights protection. The multimodal text analysis highlights the various elements of Promotion, Popularisation, and Pedagogy (the 3 Ps) which subtly overlap, both to raise awareness on human rights issues and promote the Institution itself.