A Content Analysis On Foreign And Chinese Tourists’ Online Snapshots From The Visual Grammar Perspective

This study aims to investigate the differences and similarities between foreign and Chinese tourists’online snapshots based on Kress and Van Leeuwen’s visual grammar. The author collected 338 Chinese tourist snapshots of the statue of liberty and 248 foreign tourist snapshots of the statue of liberty from the social network sites. By using the method of content analysis, the author categorized and analyzed these snapshots both qualitatively and quantitatively to verify that is it true that foreign snapshots are more open, creative and individualized than Chinese snapshots. According to the results, the author found that there is no obvious difference between foreign and Chinese tourists’ online snapshots. However, foreign tourists’snapshots are tended to be more diverse than Chinese tourists’ snapshots. Besides, Chinese tourists are likely to emphasize the people in the snapshots, while foreign tourists are more likely to emphasize the scenic spot itself in the snapshots. Based on the findings of this study, we can get some implications for the further multimodal discourse study and give some suggestion for the tourism bureaus as well as encouraging school teachers to pay attention to the visual education.