Discursive Construction Of Cultural Identity In Interactive Meaning

Along with the rapid development of culture globalization, the world culture exchange becomes more frequent and, as a result, cultural identity research has attracted more attention, but the employment of multimodal discourse analysis on cultural identity studies is of paucity. Drawing on Kress and van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar (1996) and Fairclough’s three dimensional model of discourse (1992), this thesis makes a multimodal discourse analysis of "Going Home" Public Service Advertisements (PSAs) to answer three questions:1) What are the multi-modal features of the interactive meaning in "Going Home" Public Service Advertisements?2) What cultural identities are discursively constructed by the interactive meaning in "Going Home" PSAs?3) What are the possible factors underlying the cultural identity constructing in "Going Home" PSAs?The analysis of interactive meaning of visual images suggests that "Going Home" PSAs ingeniously employ the interactive meaning strategies of "contact" to provide viewers with explicit information. They build social relationship between the producer and the viewer through social distance, and express the producer’s attitudes through perspectives. The analysis of pictorial intertextuality indicates that "Going Home" PSAs mainly construct the cultural identity of "Spring Festival" and "Home".The analysis of construction of cultural identities manifests the following two aspects:On one hand, through the application of "offer" and "social distance","Going Home" PSAs demonstrate the scene of family reunions, conveying a message that home is the symbol of "reunion" and "harmony". Meanwhile, by employing "demand","personal distance" and "eye to eye angle", the PSAs present the facial expressions of the family members when they reunite, which touches the viewers deep inside and makes them resonate with "Home" by feeling "warm" and "happy". Thus, the cultural identity of "Home" is constructed through these interactive meaning strategies. On the other hand, through the main implement of "offer" and "social distance","Going Home" PSAs present the Chinese traditions and customs of the Spring Festival such as pasting the character "Fu", giving New Year’s money and eating family reunion dinner, which pass a message that Spring Festival is featured by "luck","joy" and "reunion". In the meantime, by employing "frontal angle","eye to eye angle" and "demand act","Going Home" PSAs attract the viewers to plunge into the joyous atmosphere of celebrating Spring Festival, rendering them to generate the feelings of "happy" and "blissful". Thus, the cultural identity of "Spring Festival" is constructed.Reasons for the construction of cultural identity of Chinese "Home" and "Spring Festival" are discussed in terms of the following aspects:firstly, Chinese culture is influenced in the context of globalization, with its cultural identity becoming blurred; secondly, Chinese government is committed to protecting and developing the excellent national culture.