A Comparative Multimodal Discourse Study On English Public Speeches Made By A Chinese EFL Learner And A World Champion

Since 1990 s,study on multimodal discourse analysis has been featured by accelerating rate,expanding researchers and extending scope.However,at present,most research objects are static discourses,seldom involving dynamic discourses.English public speech is a typical type of dynamic multimodal discourse,and most previous researchers just focused on spoken-words,ignoring other modality,including facial expression,body movement and so on.Therefore,this thesis chooses two English speech videos as research objects.One is world champion’s speech video in 2016,International Public Speaking Competition,and the other is a student from Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University(NWAFU),who passed College-English Text-6(CET-6).These two samples share similar topic and time duration,to ensure accuracy and validity of research results.The thesis,adopted the method of combing quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis.For qualitative analysis,three theories are applied,which are Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar,Kress and van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar and Zhang Delu’s Synthetic Theoretical Grammar.And quantitative analysis was done by using research tool-Elan.Three research questions are included: 1)What are differences and similarities of modality application between two speakers? 2)What are meta-functional differences and similarities of spoken words and visual modality between two speakers? 3)What are differences and similarities of visual-auditory modality relations between two speakers?It has been discovered that: 1)in terms of frequency and variety of modality application,apparently,NWAFU student has less ability than champion;2)in creating conceptual meaning,champion tends to adopt physical and psychological process,going with stress,slow speed,stop and physical display-under-pants to emphasize theme of speech.However,student prefers using existence and activity process.When involving topic ideas,she just stresses it,without adopting visual modality.Here,spoken language is the dominated modality,while the other modalities act as the complement role;3)champion tries to use spoken words——“let us”;“we”;“my friends” to create intimate relationships with audience,“Mr.Chair” to show respect to Chairman,and “ biological insulation” to show hate feeling to bully,combining with visual modality,such as moving around stage,smile face,bow,eye contact,etc,to strengthen the interpersonal meaning.However,student just creates one type of interpersonal relationship,that is,intimate relationships with audience by using “we”,which results in little interaction with audience;4)in terms of compositional meaning,for champion,we can analyze from two aspects.Austere stage layout,champion’s himself attire and a great range of body movement highlight the existence of champion himself.Besides,a series of “phrase/sentence groups” are used by champion to cohere spoken text.While student just uses cohesive markers,such as “and”,neglecting the effects of visual modality.To some extent,this study further enriches theoretical framework,research object and research method.Besides,it has certain enlightenment and reference to English public speech teaching.