Multimodal Cigarette Package Warnings Analysis

Technology has brought thorough changes in the way people live and communicate. The emergence and wide spread of multimedia have rebuilt the way people send and receive messages. Thus multimodality, which contains more than one modality in the text, has found its popularity in this information era. The application of multimodality has permeated into all aspects, including cigarette package warnings. More and more countries intend to adopt multimodal cigarette package warnings rather than the ones with plain linguistic texts. Tobacco control is an international issue. Many countries are committed to implementing possible tobacco control tools, among which cigarette package warnings are the most basic.In extension of Searle’s definition of warning in linguistic sense, cigarette package warning in this paper is defined as a warning message encoded in various semiotic modes to tell the viewers/consumers the potential negative effects that smoking can incur in the future if they smoke. Structurally, cigarette package warning is a larger yet coherent discourse consisting of multiple units, including linguistic text, visual image, colour and other semiotic systems. In various modes of meaning which work together in the construction of warning, linguistic text is a predominantly important component.This papers aims to address three questions as follows:1. What is the generic structure of cigarette package warnings that can capture the nature and features of the warnings?2. In such a generic structure, how do the warnings achieve the meaning-construction tasks?3. Are there differences in meaning construction for cigarette package warnings involving different semiotic systems?This paper has collected around ninety tobacco warning discourses of different brands in four countries, where fifty-six texts are from Australia, sixteen from Canada, ten from China (including one form Taiwan) and nine from USA. These discourses are classified in this paper according to the criteria of modality.Methodologically, this study conducts qualitative analysis to investigate the meaning construction in cigarette package warnings by in-depth analysis of two samples. And a quantitative analysis to verify the theoretical analysis is also involved.Theoretically, this paper has drawn on the systemic functional approach to multimodal discourses. Based on studies in multimodal discourse analysis, especially Cheong Yin Yuen’s work in2006, this paper proposes a working generic structure of cigarette package warnings. The generic structure of cigarette package warnings consists of the lead, the announcement, the emblem, the call-and-help information, the enhancer and the emission information. The lead is the most salient element of visual images in the warning label, conveying the harmful results of smoking in the form of visual images. The announcement refers to the most salient element of linguistic texts. Ideationally, the announcement is regarded to capture the essence of the warning message the producer wish to foreground to the viewers. The emblem and the call-and-help information are the logo or the name of the warning producer and the contact information. An enhancer consists of linguistic items in a paragraph form, which can distinguish it from other announcements in form. As for content, an enhancer conveys more detailed information than the announcement in telling the negative effects of smoking. It is rare in the present cigarette package warnings. Emission information is compulsory in many countries to be displayed. It reveals the harmful chemicals in cigarettes. In most countries, it is on the side panel.The meaning construction of cigarette package warnings is semantically analyzed by investigating the three meta-functions. First, the meta-functions in the lead are analyzed from the perspective of Visual Grammar. Second, the meta-functions of the announcement are inspected from the perspective of Systemic-Functional Grammar. Theoretically, intersemiotic complementarity between the generic components offers plenty of meaning potential for the construction of warnings in cigarette packaging than the monomodal warnings. To verify this theoretical analysis, a questionnaire is carried out to help test the practical efficiency.By analyzing the meaning construction of multimodal cigarette package warnings in light of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), theoretically this paper tries to enrich the application of SFL in multimodal discourse analysis, and practically this paper also tries to find out some reasons for the implementation of graphic cigarette package warnings. By proposing a generic structure of multimodal cigarette package warnings, this paper may also reveal some rules for making cigarette package warnings.