A Comparative Analysis Of The Multimodal Discourses In English Textbooks

As one of the main discourses of education, textbook discourse has played an important role in the process of education and culture's transmission. Meanwhile, it has been an important subject for systemic functional studies. Recently, along with the development of technology as well as the changing of people's thinking ways, textbook discourse is no longer a single black-and-white text-based discourse; instead, it has become a multimodal discourse with various modes to co- create meaning.Based on Halliday's functional grammar as well as Kress and Van Leeuwen's visual grammar in social semiotics, and Royce's framework of intersemiotic complementarity, this thesis made a comparative analysis on the multimodal discourses in English textbooks from junior middle school to university level through the following aspects: the ideational function, the interpersonal function, the textual function, and the ideational complementatity between text and image.The overall aim of this thesis is to provide a multi-modal interpretation of the differences of textbook discourses at the various stages and then through the analysis of the causes of those differences, we attempt to explore the implications as well as the pros and cons of the textbooks for students'multiliteracies'development and to provide suggestions for textbook compiling. The study is divided into three parts: the first part is concerned with the ideational functions of the images as well as the semantic complementary interrelationship between text and image. In the second and third parts, the interpersonal function as well as textual function of the images is analyzed. Through these three analyses, it has been found that the main function of English textbook is intended to transmit the essential and stable knowledge and experience to students, and with the development of learning stages, the interpersonal function of textbook discourse is gradually decreasing. At the same time, the impact of the textual function of the textbook discourse on students'learning has not been presented enough.