A Systemic And Functional Study Of Multimodality In College English Listening Textbooks

Discourse analysis has gone through a great development both in theory and practice since its appearance as a subject in the early1950s. However, under the influence of the highly developed science and information technology, meaning is realized not only through language but also through the integrated use of a wide range of semiotic resources such as image, sound, and color, etc. Traditional language-dominant discourse analysis is not enough. Therefore, Multimodal Discourse Analysis came into being in such social circumstances in1990s. It refers to a study of interrelationship and interdependence between different communicative modes in meaning making.Being an important tool for conveyance of knowledge and culture, textbooks are attracting more and more researchers to be involved in this field. With the development of information technology and word-processing, the multimodal features of textbook designing outstand gradually. Obviously it is imperative to do multimodal discourse analysis on the textbooks.Kress and van Leeuwen first published Reading Images in1996. After sixteen years’ development and perfection, visual grammar has become a relative mature theory, which is based on Systemic and Functional Linguistics, to guide the multimodal discourse analysis. This thesis, mainly based on the main principles of functional grammar and the theory of Visual Grammar, makes a comparative study between the monomodal listening textbooks of college English and the multimodal ones, in order to seek answers for the questions as follows:(1) What are the differences between monomodal and multimodal textbooks of college English listening?(2) What are the three metafunctions of visuals and multimodal features of multimodal listening textbooks?(3) What are the pedagogical implications of this research for developing students’multiliteracies and textbook design?The results of this study reveal that the listening textbooks in present use are typical examples of multimodal texts, compared with the textbooks used two decades ago, which are mainly monomodal ones. The multimodal listening textbook designers apply all kinds of semiotic resources to convey the knowledge and meaning making. Furthermore, all the semiotic resources are cooperating together to construct the meaning. The suggestions for multimodal textbook designing in future are also put forward. Besides, the multimodal discourse analysis of multimodal listening textbooks is helpful to the cultivation of college students’multiliteracies.