A Multimodal Comparative Analysis Of Course Web Pages In China And America: A Case Study

With the development of the internet technology, as well as the change of people’s reading habit, themedium that is used to deliver information has turned out to be more and more diverse. Those media thatcontain only verbal contents or are mainly occupied by text are no longer enough for the readers. At thesame time, other modes such as images, color, videos and so on are going to take up a major place. Thiskind of rapid development of web pages is revealing a kind of transformation from mono mode tomultimode among all the media, as well as on the course web pages. Thus, under such circumstance, theresearches of multimodal discourse analysis and the interpretation of the different modes and theirrelationship are becoming more and more widespread in the academic field.The thesis has made a general analysis of move structures of altogether ten Chinese course web pagesand ten American course web pages with the theory of genre analysis, and then typically chooses out oneChinese course web page–Intermediate English Writing in Guangdong University of Foreign Studies andone American course web pages–English Composition I: Achieving Expertise in Duke University, and hasanalyzed the representational, interactive and compositional meanings of these two course web pages withthe theory of visual grammar. The present study aims to solve four questions. The first one is how themeaning is conveyed through the move structures in Chinese and American course web pages? The secondone is how the representational meaning, interactive meaning and compositional meaning are realized inChinese and American course web pages; the third one is what are the similarities and differences betweenChinese and American course web pages, and the forth one is what causes the similarities and differencesbetween Chinese and American course web pages. The thesis focuses on the multimodal discourse analysisof the course web pages and through the comparative analysis of the three meanings of the course webpages, the thesis aims at helping the learners understand and use the course web pages better.The thesis has six chapters together, chapter one has made a general introduction the background,purpose and significance of the research one by one, and then some definitions about the multimodalanalysis and the structure of the study. Chapter two is the literature review of the research, includingprevious studies on multimodal analysis, previous studies on web pages and studies on multimodal analysisof web pages. Chapter three lists the theoretical framework of the research in a concrete way, includinggenre theory and visual grammar. In introducing the theory of visual grammar, the thesis displays therepresentational meanings, interactive meanings and compositional meanings one by one. Chapter four is the design of the research, including the research questions, data collection and the methodology of theresearch. Chapter five is the detailed data analysis and discussion of the research, and is the most crucialpart of the thesis. Two modes on the web pages are selected and analyzed in this part; they are movestructures of the discourse and the representational, interactive and compositional meanings of the images.Depending on the analysis of the two modes of the web pages, the thesis figures out the similarities anddifferences between Chinese and American course web pages and then discusses on the causes of suchsimilarities and differences. Chapter six is a conclusion of the whole research. The thesis answers the threeresearch questions one by one, and then points out the limitations of the research and the suggestions abouthow to do better in the future study of the multimodal discourse analysis on course web pages.To sum up, the thesis has drawn to the conclusion as in the following:1) there are thirteen similarmoves between Chinese and American course web pages, such as the introduction of the course andprofessors, schedules and syllabus of the course and so on.2) There are thirty-three move structures thatcan be regarded as unique characteristics of Chinese course web pages, such as the move structure of textbook. There are thirty-five move structures that show special characteristics of American course web pages,such as the move structure peer assessment.3) On both Chinese and American course web pages, therepresentational meaning is generally realized by action process of narrative image whose percentage isrespectively76.5%and73.3%.4) On Chinese course web pages, the interactive meaning is generallyrealized by offer contact (52.9%), impersonal distance (64.7%), eye level attitude (94.1%) and highmodality (94.1%). While on American course web pages, the interactive meaning is generally realized bydemand (73.3%), social distance (60%), eye level attitude (80%) and high modality (80%).5) On bothChinese and American course web pages, the compositional meaning are generally realized by center andmargin information value (94.2%,93.3%), high salience (100%,93.3%) and segregation framing (83.3%,77.8%).6) There exist some similarities and differences between Chinese and American course web pages,and culture is regarded as the main causes of the differences between Chinese and American course webpages.