Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of Non-verbal Behaviors

With the progression and development of multimedia technology, classroom teaching shows the characteristic of multimodality. Teachers not merely utilize blackboard and chalks,they also explain teaching contents by virtue of instruments of multimedia. People come to realize that non-verbal semiotics like sound, music, gestures, gaze, facial expressions and distance other than language can also become the resources of meaning-making to transmit messages. In practical teaching, teachers try to apply various modes such as pictures,gestures, and other non-verbal semiotics consciously or unconsciously to express meaning.However, some teachers not employ them appropriately. Besides, many teachers may ignore to observe students’ reaction from facial expressions, eye contact, posture. Thus, teachers ought to raise their awareness of non-verbal behaviors to achieve more effective interaction with students and enhance teaching efficiency.At present, most researches mainly focus on relatively static multimodal discourse analysis(advertising, posters) and pay less attention to analyze dynamic one(films, foreign language teaching). This thesis mainly studies college teachers’ non-verbal behaviors in class from the perspective of multimodal discourse analysis and pictures, symbols and inserted videos in teachers’ PPT slides according to Kress & Van Leeuwen’s theory of visual grammar and Halliday’s theory of systemic functional linguistics. This research chooses the videos of the 3rd SFLEP(Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press) National College English Teaching Contest as the analysis material. Three excellent finalists are selected as research subjects from 24 competitors in accordance with experts’ comments and suggestions, data collection after watching videos repeatedly and these competitors’ personal experience including awards they have won. This study mainly adopts qualitative case study method. To get more reliable data about the teachers’ modes usage conditions, the researcher also carries out quantitative analysis by using the software-ELAN, aiming at solving the following three questions:(1) What kind of non-verbal semiotic modes except language mode college English teachers usually apply to construct the meaning of classroom discourse?(2) How do multiple non-verbal modes utilized in multimedia class to construct the representational, interactive and compositional meaning?(3) And how do non-verbal modes cooperate with others to achieve effective teaching? The researcher expects that this thesis may make teachers raise their awareness of the significance of non-verbal behaviors further.Besides, it can provide some suggestions for class interaction and effective classroom teaching and make a bit contribution to the study of multimodal discourse analysis and teachers’ development.