A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of Chinese Print Food Advertisements

The development of the modern technology makes the ways of human communication full of the features of multimodality. In the advertisement, the using of several modes is highly valued. Meanwhile, the multimodal discourse analysis catches attention from the researchers in the field of linguistics. The western researchers have established the theoretical tools for the multimodal discourse analysis, among which, the Visual Grammar proposed by Kress and Van Leeuwen is the most salient. Researchers in China have introduced the western theories, and made tentative researches in the fundamental theories of multimodal discourse analysis. The present study takes Chinese print food ads as the typical example to carry out multimodal analysis of the ad from the perspective of ad producers and readers. It has theoretical and practical significance: firstly, this study could give some hints to ad producers in terms of the design and dissemination of the commercial ads, and meanwhile, it also helps consumers to interpret the ad exactly; secondly, the present study explores the application of multimodal discourse analysis in Chinese print food ads and thus, it is conducive to the enrichment of the existing theories. In addition, the present study also highlights the role of Chinese culture in the meaning-making process of the ads.With Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar, and Kress and Van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar as the theoretical tools, the study, intensively observing the advertisement of "Large Fruit Granules Yoghurt" by Yili Corporation, aims to solve three problems:the meaning-making mechanism of the multimodal text, the collocation of image and verbal text in the print food ad; the role of Chinese culture in the meaning-making process of the multimodal text. Qualitative and quantitative studies are both adopted in this study. Through the analysis of the typical example, we conclude three findings:firstly, image functions through the realization of its representational, interactive and compositional meanings, and the verbal text functions through the realization of ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings; secondly, the collocation of image and verbal text refers to "anchorage","explanation", and "relay". During the process of that, the integrated meaning of the multimodal text is formed; thirdly, Chinese cultural background influences the meaning of multimodal text. Specifically, Chinese culture provides the context for "Large Fruit Granules" ad, and this point makes the interpretation of the meaning unique.On the basis of the case study, this study further carries out a questionnaire among28university students to testify the meaning-making mechanism and the collocation of image and verbal text from the perspective of the readers’ interpretation. The results testify the conclusion in the case study. Thus, readers of the ad could interpret the whole meaning that the ad producers deliver on condition that both the image and the verbal part are shown to them.In summary, there are three innovative points in this study:firstly, the study chooses Chinese food print ad as the research object, which haven’t been fully explored and analyzed in detail at present; secondly, the present study also pays attention to the role of Chinese culture in generating the multimodal meaning; thirdly, this study adopts both the perspectives of ad producers and readers by carrying out a case study and a simple survey study, while the existing researches mostly explicate the meaning generation of the multimodal text from the perspective of ad producers.