A Study On The Interpersonal Meaning Of Multimodal Buzzwords From University Wechat Official Accounts Under The Framework Of Appraisal Theory

With WeChat exerting as a convenient channel to reach massive individual users in New Media Era,many universities have launched their own official accounts on WeChat as a platform for information sharing and interaction with faculty staff,students and even parents.When editing articles,university WeChat official accounts sometimes use multimodal buzzwords as a linguistic tactic to deliver message or invite interaction.This study is designed to investigate the interpersonal meaning of above-mentioned multimodal buzzwords.The analysis of buzzwords in verbal modality falls under the framework of Appraisal Theory(AT),a theoretical mechanism dealing with the interpersonal function of language on lexical basis.For the buzzwords in visual modality,the present study constructs a synthetic “Multimodality-Appraisal System”(MAS),which is based on Appraisal Theory and Visual Grammar.In this thesis,69 pieces of article fragments which encompass diverse multimodal buzzwords are chosen for a quantitative collection for the investigation into the distribution of different types of Appraisal resources.After that,a qualitative analysis of the specific types of multimodal buzzwords will be made.The focus of the present study is on the language strategies relating to the application of multimodal buzzwords in articles by university WeChat official accounts,on their connotative intentions to construct interpersonal relationship through the frequency,tendency and preference of the subsystem under AT and MAS.The present study finds that university WeChat official accounts are more inclined to use either pure verbal buzzwords or the combination of both verbal and visual buzzwords to balance authority and entertainment.For verbal buzzwords,the attitudinal type overwhelmingly outnumbers resources of Graduation and Engagement in that Attitude is the most direct way to express feeling and take stance.Graduation resources,which are used to scale attitudinal resources,rank the second in terms of frequency.Those least preferred Engagement resources are for circumstances calling for instant interactions,which occur relatively less often.As for visual buzzwords,meme pictures are more frequently resorted to than emoji icons and semiotic symbols because they are more capable of loading information and expressing meaning.In the adoption of visual buzzwords,university We Chat official accounts tend to position themselves as students for the alignment in interpersonal relationship.