A Multimodal Discourseanalysis On The Images Of Chinese Females

With the development of technology, image, sound and other non-verbal semiotics have shownmore obvious effects on people’s daily communications and meaning expressions. The traditionaldiscourse analysis which is based on a monomodel language is gradually developing intomultimodal discourse analysis.This thesis intends to use multimodal discourse analysis as theoretical basis to do the researchon female images. The present literature reveals that the studies on female image mainly focus onfour aspects, i.e. women’s consciousness, construction of femininity, women’s roles and the valueorientation. And most of them have adopted sociology and communication theory to do the analysis.The research results of analyzing female image from multimodal discourse analysis perspectivehave been rarely found.This thesis, based on multimodal discourse analysis theory, selects Chinese Women andChinese Youth as research samples, using content analysis to compare and analyze the visualfeatures of female images on magazine covers from two periods—the first five years after theReform and Opening Policy (1978-1982) and the first five years thirty years after the Reform andOpening Policy (2008-2012). Through statistic analysis and comparison of the women’s differentfrequencies of visual features, the visual image changes and the changing roles of women from thetwo historical periods above will be found out and the social meanings conveyed by the changeswill be discovered.Through analysis, the main conclusions are drawn as follows:(1) The interactive waysbetween the potential viewer and the female images on magazine covers are quite different. First, inthe first five years of Reform and Opening Policy (1978-1982), the female images on magazinecovers rarely look directly at the potential viewers, they only offer information to the viewers. Thisshows that they are presented as the model being watched and admired. But in the first five yearsthirty years after the Reform and Opening policy (2008-2012), due to the fast developing speed ofcommercialization, as the “speakers” of the magazines, the shape of their images is to help themagazines reach their commercial goals. They intend to establish social relations (on an imaginarylevel) with their potential viewers and demand recognition and trust from the potential viewers.Therefore, there are more interactions between them. Second, the selection of the social distance ofthe female images on magazine covers has no obvious difference between the two periods.(2) Onthe aspect of female visual features, compared with the first five years after the Reform andOpening Policy (1978-1982), women’s femininity has been greatly improved, which reflects the release of individuality and the change of public aesthetic conception. What’s more, the femaleimage from the second period (2008-2012) is more salient and outstanding, which is good forgrabbing viewer’s eyes. Besides, the salient female figures also suggest the value of emphasizingthe individual.(3) On the aspect of the women’s occupational roles, their professions have gonethrough the change from “worker and peasant,”“soldier” to “popular star”,“business women” and“the intellectual”. As “speakers”, they are selected and shaped by the mainstream media and thechange of their occupational roles can reflect the change of social values, that is, the social valuehas changed from advocating people to fight for collectivism to encouraging people to go after theirown personal success. Besides, the intellectuals also account for a certain percentage, which revealsthat the nation attaches importance to science and knowledge.