外宣网页的多模态话语研究

发布时间：2016-05-03 06:12

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Background Information
The Internet has rapidly globalized after its entry into commerce since 1990s. Itworks as one of the important information infrastructures in social progress andeconomic development around the world. After years of rapid development, especiallyits popularization after 2000, the Internet has played a very important role and widelyimmersed in people’s lives. On the Internet you can chat with people the other side ofthe globe, play e-games with anonymous team-mates, and shop exotic fruit withon-door deliveries. More importantly, the Internet can also be used for commoditypromotion and on-line purchase. Obviously, the Internet has brought about greatconvenience to real life. Besides, under the background of economic globalization,people around the globe need to better understand each other than before. The bestway for people to know each other is to break cultural barriers. The rise of the Internethas provided a new convenient channel for culture dissemination, especially throughthe publicity webpage. Its impact on the dissemination and promotion of Chineseculture cannot be overlooked. The website of China Culture is the authorityorganization that makes policies in cultural exchanges. It is one of the mostauthoritative and representative cultural publicity website, which is sponsored by theBureau for External Cultural Relations, Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republicof China. The website is undertaken by China Daily, which is the first and the mostimportant national English media website. Both sides work for the timeliness andinteractivity of the Internet collectively. Therefore, China Culture bridges the world tounderstand China, Chinese nation and Chinese traditional culture.
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1.2 Research Questions and Significance of the thesis
Webpage discourse as a multimodal discourse of modern information technologyas a whole is an important channel for people to communicate and transferinformation. The rise of the Internet provides a new convenient channel for thedissemination and communication of culture, especially the publicity webpage, whose impact on the dissemination and promotion of Chinese culture cannot be overlooked.In this background, the interpretation of the various modes and their relationships ofChinese cultural publicity webpage becomes a worthwhile exploring area.This thesis tries to make multimodal discourse analysis on China Culture underthe proposed model. Here, two modes (text and image) as well as the relationshipbetween them are analyzed in order to find out the following questions：1. How meaning is expressed in various modes of webpage?2. What are the relationships among modes of webpage?3. How to maximize coordination and cooperation, and better constructmeaning?The significance of the thesis can be concluded from theoretical perspective andpractical perspective. Theoretically, the thesis breaks through the limitation of theobject of traditional webpage research analysis because it takes cultural publicitywebpage as the research object. This perspective is the first tentative try in relevantresearch. Therefore, it enriches the research dimension of webpage discourse analysisand widens the field of multimodal discourse analysis. In addition, a thoroughanalysis in the thesis includes not only the text and image, but also the relationshipbetween text and image with the methodology of quantitative and qualitative analysis.In the thesis, it attempts to establish an applicable analyzing model for webpagediscourse in the days to come. Practically, the thesis improves people’s multimodaldiscourse reading ability of cultural publicity webpage, and urges people to becomecapable of comprehending different modes and the relationship between them inwebpage. What’s more, the exploration of China Culture may provide certaintheoretical basis for the design of other cultural publicity websites and giveenlightenment for the designers.
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Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Overview of Multimodal Discourse Analysis
In the past decade, multimodal discourse analysis, as a new mode of discourseanalysis, booms and develops in the west world. The previous studies on discourseanalysis mainly either consider the language as the object of study or explore thelanguage application rules from the perspective of language system and the semanticstructure itself, or study its relation to society culture and cognitive psychology.Other meaning-expressing forms, such as image, sound, color and animation are notincluded into consideration. The researchers think that other semiotic resources arefunctional and symbolic just as language and they all belong to social semioticresources as well. Based on the theory of functional linguistics, multimodal discourseanalysis attempts to apply the method of language study to some other semioticresources (such as facial expression, gesture, image, music, etc.). Thus, it overcomesthe traditionally limited attention to the language system and semantic structure itself.It serves as an approach to break the barrier in research between language and society,culture and cognitive psychology. The rise of multimodal discourse analysis providesa new way for analyzing the discourse composed of various semiotics. It helps thereaders understand how different modes, as social semiotics, work together andconstruct meaning. It plays a positive role in improving people’s ability to interpretmultimodality.
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2.2 Previous Studies of Multimodal DiscourseAnalysis
AnalysisOne of the early researchers in multimodal discourse analysis is R. Barthes, whopublished Rhetoric of the image in 1977 in which he discussed the interactionbetween meaning expression of image and language. O’Toole’s The Language ofDisplayed Art (1994) and Kress & van Leeuwen’s Reading Images (1996) havemarked the establishment of this field. The former one attempts to apply functionallinguistic theory to art analysis; while the latter one puts forward a comprehensive andsystematic explanation of the grammar of visual design which leads to profoundinfluence in the field of doing multimodal discourse analysis.Kress and van Leeuwen (1996; 2001; 2003) study the relationship withinmodality and media. They explore multimodal phenomenon expressing meaningregularly, including color grammar, visual image, the layout design of newspaper andfunction of various medias. Baldry (2000) studies multimediality and its use in the ageof distance learning. Leeuwen and Jewitt (2000) publish the Handbook of VisualDesign, which introduces the visual analysis in anthropology, cultural studies,psychological treatment, ethnographic research, the film and television works and soon. Kress et al. (2001) show their interests in multimodal teaching and learning in thescience classroom. Royce, T. (2002) studies on the complementarities of differentsymbols in the multimodal discourse as well as multimodal cooperatives in the classof second language teaching. Lemke (2002) studies hypermodality. Kress (2003)looks at literacy in the new media age. Scollon and Scollon (2003) examine themeanings of signs in the material world. O’Halloran, K. L. (2004) not only studies the construction of multimodal theory, but also specializes in multimodal phenomena inmathematics discourse. LeVine and Scollon (2004) try to investigate discourse andtechnology. Norris (2004) proposes a methodological framework aiming at theanalysis of human’s interaction in its vast complexity. Baldry and Thibault (2006)investigate not only multimodal transcription but also text analysis of different kindsincluding webpage, films, advertisements and London tube maps. Machin (2007)illustrates multimodal discourse analysis under Kress’s social semiotic work.
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Chapter Three Theoretical Framework.....17
3.1Attitude System fromAppraisal Theory.......17
3.2 Visual Grammar.....20
3.3 Image-Text Relation Theory......... 22
3.3.1 The Theory of Image-Text Zone..........23
3.3.2 The Theory of Image-Text System...... 25
3.4AProposed Model.........28
Chapter FourAnalysis of Webpage within the Framework......31
4.1 Textual Analysis.... 31
4.1.1Affect....32
4.1.2 Judgment.......35
4.1.3Appreciation.........38
4.2 VisualAnalysis......41
4.2.1 Contact..........41
4.2.2 Social Distance.....44
4.2.3Attitude.........46
4.3Analysis of the Relation between Image and Text........49
4.3.1Analysis of the Zone between Image and Text....49
4.3.2Analysis of the Status between Image and Text.......... 52
4.4 Summary........53Chapter Five Conclusion...........55
5.1 Major Findings......55
5.2 Limitations and Suggestions.........56

Chapter Four Analysis of Webpage within the Framework

4.1 TextualAnalysis

As for the analysis of the text, it will be conducted with the guidance of theattitude system of the appraisal system. Martin and White (2005) hold that attitudeconcerns people’s character and feelings, which includes emotional reactions,judgments of behavior and evaluation of things. The central component of attitudesystem is the affect system. The judgment system and appreciation system are basedon the affect system. Form the definitions of Martin and White (2005), affect meansthe evaluation via the speaker or writer who indicates how they are disposed to thething, person or state of affairs; judgment means the human behavior’s normativeassessments, typically referring to conventions or rules of behavior; appreciation theassessments involving in the appearance, form, impact, composition, natural objects,significance of human artifacts, and human individuals, instead of human behavior,referring to aesthetics and other systems of social value. The three can either bepositive or negative.Therefore, the overall and detailed distribution analysis will be conductedincluding positive or negative meaning. In addition, the basis of classification ismainly according to the presented figure by Martin.

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Conclusion

We are in a new era in which science and technology change rapidly. Thedevelopment of multimedia technology and Internet technology makes the way ofinformation dissemination diversified. As the carrier of various modes webpageemerges in an endless stream, and cultural publicity webpage is one of them.Although the study of multimodal discourse on webpage has attracted people’sattention, the study of cultural publicity webpage is still a relatively new field.With the guidance of the theoretical framework of appraisal system, visualgrammar, the theory of image-text zone and the theory of image-text system, the text,the image and the relation between the two have been discussed. It aims at finding outhow each mode expresses meaning respectively and how is the relationship betweenmodes and how to maximize coordination and cooperation, and better constructmeaning. Through the all-round study, some major findings about China Culture havebeen outlined.Firstly, with the aid of the appraisal theory, especially the attitude system, thetext part is analyzed to find out how to express meaning better. The appreciation ofthe attitude system is used mostly in order to provide the viewers with objectiveevaluation about the presented content. What’s more, the dominance of the usage ofpositive ones can offer the optimistic and positive information for the viewers.
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The reference (omitted)

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