A Multimodal Analysis Of English Textbooks

Multimodal discourse analysis is a new approach to discourse analysis based on the semiotic theory of systemic functional linguistics. It investigates the meaning-making system of the combination of two or more than two semiotic systems within a text. Based on Kress and Van Leeuwen’s theory, the present study concentrates on how linguistic and visual semiotic resources cooperate with each other to construct meaning in multimodal pedagogic materials for teaching English as a foreign language for secondary education.Pedagogical discourse has been an important subject for systemic functional linguists because of its significant role in education and cultural transmission. And textbook is one of the major categories of pedagogical discourse. As textbook has undergone tremendous changes in its form, it is extremely significant to conduct progressive studies on textbook discourse. The data of this study is composed of five textbooks for teaching English as a foreign language for secondary education published by People’s Education Press in2007.This thesis reviews previous studies concerning textbooks, including researches from both a monomodal and a multimodal perspective. As for the review of multimodality, multimodality theory and the applications of multimodality discourse included. Then, the theoretical framework mainly introduces Halliday’s systematic functional linguistics as well as Kress and Van Leeuwen’s visual grammar. The visual grammar, derived form systematic functional linguistics, is adaptable in analyzing the multimodal texts. After introducing the theoretical framework, detailed multimodal analysis on textbook discourse based on the theory of visual grammar follows. The analyzing part elaborates and exemplifies through the textbooks how the representational, interactive and compositional meanings are achieved by means of the detailed analysis based on various elements such as contact, social distance, perspectives, information value, salience and framing.The research design is comprised of two respects:it investigates the characteristics of the visual images in the multimodal secondary English textbook discourse and explores the way in which those images construe representational, interactive and compositional meanings; besides, it discusses the relationship between linguistic and visual meaning-making resources in the multimodal secondary English textbooks and the effects the interaction make. The thesis verifies that systemic functional linguistics and the visual grammar are useful tools for the analysis of the interaction between the visual and the verbal semiotic resources which realizes the experiential meaning in an integral way in the multimodal discourse. At the same time, the analysis shows that the multimodal discourse is helpful in the English learning and teaching and gives some suggestions for the students and teachers.