Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of Children English Textbooks

As a bridge linking teachers and students, textbooks have played an outstanding role in English teaching and learning. Textbooks are enriched with many characteristics as visuals, sounds, pictures and so on to convey information. Textbooks definitely own the typical characteristics of multimodality as its semiotic features. Many researchers conduct research on textbooks from various aspects. However, the investigation of textbooks of multimodality in the way of systemic functional linguistics is rare, especially for young children English textbooks. The study of multimodality from the aspect of systemic functional linguistics benefits not only the academic researchers, but also textbook designers teachers and students.Based on the theories of Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics (language as social semiotic and three metafunctions) and Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar (three meanings), the thesis takes ColaGo YoYo A as analysis data to make a multimodality discourse analysis. This research is designed to help readers understand the presentations of multimodal discourse more deeply and then contribute to the textbook designing and using.The research applies qualitative methodology and classification methodology. Firstly, an content classification of ColaGo YoYo A is performed and then, a comprehensive and systemic study of textbook content is carried out from three metafunctions according to systemic functional linguistics and visual grammar to read the interaction between words and images in textbooks.The present study testifies the feasibility and practicability of visual grammar based on systemic functional linguistics to children English textbooks. Meanwhile, a new approach to children English textbooks analysis is provided-multimodal discourse analysis. The aim goes to enrich the research scale of English textbooks and help teachers and students better understand textbooks.