Ideational Meaning In Secondary EFL Textbooks In China:a Multimodal Discourse Analysis

Multimodal discourse that language in combination with other semiotic resources is co-deployed in the meaning-making system has become one of the major focuses of discourse analysis. The multimodality of pedagogical discourse has also caught attention from linguistics and social semiotics.Drawing on Halliday’s systemic-functional linguistics and its development Visual Grammar, this thesis takes ten secondary EFL textbooks, published by People’s Education Press between2006and2007as data. It mainly discusses how verbal texts and visual images construct ideational meaning and how the different modes in the textbooks relate to each other.Through a detailed analysis, fruitful findings are displayed as follows.(1) Through action vectors and speech balloons emanated by real or virtual characters, narrative processes are given priority in the visuals. They encourage readers to engage in contexts and learn actions and dialogues by imitation. Action processes and speech processes are two main narrative forms in ideational meaning construction. Classificational processes are dominant conceptual structures of visual images, facilitating readers’logic reasoning abilities. Part-whole structures of analytical processes have also enriched visual images in secondary EFL textbooks.(2) Verbal texts and visual images in the multimodal discourse complement each other through elaboration or extension. Verbal texts expand or add new information that visual images lack, whereas visual images provide a detailed background in teaching contents (e. g. warm-up activities, after-class practice, etc.) In addition, they also convey diametrically opposite ideational meaning.(3) Cooperation of multiple modes rather than single ones will be better at realizing ideational meaning; interdisciplinary characteristics and critical thinking in pedagogical discourse cultivate readers’diversified literacy.Verbal and visual semiotics follows cognition development of secondary students and coincides with EFL discipline characteristics. Secondary teachers and designers of textbooks employ multiple semiotic resources to convey ideational meaning to the full.