Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of Side By Side

Since first raised in the 1950 s, discourse analysis has been greatly expanded in theories, approaches and research scope. The research objects shift from the singular mode(language) to multimodal discourses which contain diversified semiotic resources. Massive outstanding works relating with this area has emerged up. As a kind of important pedagogical discourses, textbooks play a vital role in transmitting knowledge and culture and have caused continuing concern of the linguists. Along with the advance of technology, textbooks are no longer confined to the black and white printed text. Instead they extend to the scope of multimodal discourses which consist of various meaning-making semiotic resources, such as image, text, color and typography.Kress & van Leeuwen applied metafunctions in system-functional linguistics to visual modality and raised Visual Grammar in 1996. With a dozen years of development, it became the theoretical start of multimodal discourse analysis. In the light of Visual Grammar, Jones(2007) raised Intersemiotic Complementarity to deal with image-text relations. Within the framework of these two theories, a multimodal discourse analysis is made on Side by Side, a series of introduced English textbooks for Chinese junior high school students. The analysis is a two-step process. The first step involves a multimodal content analysis which adopts a hybrid of the quantitative approach and the qualitative approach. The author splits multimodal contents into image, text, color and typography, explores how they construct meanings combinatively and independently, and investigates the multimodal characteristics of these content types. The second step is a multimodal discourse analysis adopting the qualitative approach. It probes the image-text interrelations and the way they construct meanings together.The first-step analysis reveals that with respect to image content, cartoon is the most frequently used image type. With correspondence to that, narrative processes take a high proportion. Besides, images occupy the most space in the majority of the pages and its distribution is random. As for text, the most frequently used type is the running text, interspersed with highlighted text, caption, heading, summary and so on. Georgia, a kind of serif giving people a formal impression, is commonly applied in running text, questions and answers. Size 4 is applied in the whole text content. In terms of color and typography, they are applied in a proper way to make the learning content more lively and hence motivate students’ interest.The main effort in the second-step analysis is put in the analysis of ideational complementarity. It is found that the cooperation of image and text does a better job in meaning making than the singular mode. Synonymy and repetition are the major means for the co-construction of meanings.The analysis above may shed some light on multiliteracy cultivation and domestic textbook design. It is suggested that apart from passing on knowledge, teachers should also impart various semiotic resources to students and instruct them to keep an eye on the co-construction of meanings. In this way, their learning motivation and enthusiasm can be stimulated. The students, on the other hand, should play an active role in developing their multiliteracy under the instruction of their teacher. For the domestic textbook design, the designer should take the selection and collocation of different semiotics seriously and develop qualified multimodal textbooks for Chinese students.