| Nowadays, e-commerce develops quickly and the way of delivering information has represented the characteristic of multimodality. In the thesis, the data are chosen from 20 English homepages of well-known B2 C e-commerce websites. Quantitative and qualitative analysis methods are utilized to conduct a detailed multimodal analysis of English B2 C e-commerce webpages from social semiotic perspective within the framework of visual grammar and color grammar put forward by Kress and van Leeuwen, image-text relationship theory proposed by Martinec and Salway, and some other systemic-functional linguistic theories. This thesis aims to explore the methods and features in the realization of the representational, interactive and compositional meanings of visual images, the meaning of color and the relationship between an image and a text in English B2 C e-commerce webpages. The emphasis rests on visual image analysis.The study is expected to provide a new perspective for theoretical study of e-commerce websites, to provide some inspiration for webpage design and to help enhance multiliteracy. The major research findings of this thesis are as follows.In English B2 C e-commerce webpages, conceptual images(70.9%) are much more widely used than the narrative images(29.1%) in realization of representational meaning. Through the employment of conceptual representation, the e-commerce webpage can represent more information of goods objectively for webpage viewers.In realization of interactive meaning, as for contact, the number of “demand” images(83.7%) is far more than that of “offer” images(16.3%). If just considering the photos with human or quasi-human participants, they are equal. By choosing “demand” photos, the website invites or persuades image viewers to take part in interaction and to buy the goods; by choosing “offer” photos, the website provides goods information in a more objective way. As for social distance, medium shot(50.8%) is the most widely used one, and the second is close shot(39.0%). By choosing different social distances, the website can not only keep a close relationship with the customers to build friendliness and trust while maintaining detached to some degree to create a kind of formal and impersonal business environment, which facilitates the trade success. As for attitude, from the horizontal angle, images with frontal point of view account for a greater proportion than those with oblique point of view(55.4% and 44.6% respectively) and from the vertical angle, the majority of the images uses eye-level angle which takes 93.1%. It indicates that there exists an equal power between the customers and the website which is useful for the trade.In realization of compositional meaning, the position(46.0%) that image is on the top while text is at the bottom is most favored in the English B2 C e-commerce webpages, which is the representation of Ideal-Real information, and the second is the position that image is on the left while text is on the right(20.2%), which belongs to the representation of Given-New information. Besides, the whole English B2 C e-commerce webpage usually takes a blending use of two spatial positions: a combination of top-bottom structure and left-right structure, and centre-margin structure. It could offer viewers abundant and full-scale information of goods and activities and create a united meaningful whole.Besides, in terms of color analysis, it is found that color can also fulfill the three metafunctions simultaneously just as the visual and verbal modes do.Finally, for the image-text relationship, the results show that English B2 C e-commerce webpage tends to create equal status relationship between an image and a text, especially the complementary relationship. In that way, the visual and verbal modes complement each other in the webpage to introduce goods, activities or services in a brief but still informative way in the limited webpage space, leaving a deep impression on the webpage viewers. |
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