A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of Presentations In The College English Teaching Contest

With the rapid development of computer science and internet,the integration of language,image,video and other semiotic resources is widely applied in communication and classroom discourse.Multimodal discourse analysis has attracted much interest in recent years.The studies not only focus on static discourses such as advertising,textbooks,newspaper,but also describe three dimensional dynamic discourses.Based on multimodal analysis of science,math,and biology classroom,the thesis tries to apply the multimodal discourse analysis to English teaching.The aim of this thesis is to make a multimodal discourse analysis on presentations in the college English teaching contest.The fundamental theoretical bases derive principally from the theory of Halliday's systemic functional grammar and Kress & van Leeuwen's visual grammar.The thesis tries to study three research questions: first,the features of multimodal resources in the college English teaching contest;second,the frequency and distribution of different semiotic resources;third,how different modalities interact with each other to construct meanings.The research data is the video of college English teaching contest and the research tool is multimodal annotation soft ELAN.The research result shows that first,college English teaching contest is a kind of multimodal dynamic discourse and it integrates verbal language,visual image,visual text,embedded video & sound,gesture,gaze,distance and other semiotic resources together in meaning construction.The general structure of it is concluded as following:[Class Beginning]-[Teaching Objective]-[Main Content]-[Discussion & Debate]-[Assignments]-[Finish].It mainly takes the following kinds of collocation patterns:verbal language,visual text & gesture,verbal language & visual image,verbal language & image & text,verbal language & gesture,and embedded video & text.Language and gaze run through the whole process of teaching.Overall,the multimodality is mainly reflected in the main content and discussion & debate period and embedded video,visual text,image & text use most while embedded voice and facial expression use least.Second,through the annotation,different stages show different modal complexity.The modal complexity in the beginning and finishingperiod are lower than teaching objective,main content,and discussion & debate.In terms of modal intensity,embedded video,visual text,and image & text are higher which accounts for 13.393%,10.785% and 8.354% respectively.Third,teachers construct meanings through the collocation and interaction among different semiotic recourses.According to the contest result,the first prize shows multimodality in meaning construction.Representational meaning is mainly constructed by embedded video and image & text;the result shows that representational is constructed mainly through narrative process;the interactive meaning is realized through the integration of eye contact,changes of distance and media perspective;the compositional meaning is constructed through information value,salience and framing.The relation among different modal resources belongs to complementary and foreground & background relationship.This thesis makes an annotation on the semiotic recourses and analyzes the meanings' construction.Therefore,this research has certain significance.In terms of theory,it testifies the theory of visual grammar applied to dynamic discourse and enriches the dynamic multimodal research.In terms of practice,the results can provide some ideas for the multiliteracy of modern English and make some contribution to multimodal college English teaching.