Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of Winter Olympic Emblems

The role of mono-modality in expressing meaning is weaker and weaker in this modern and rapid-development society. It is replaced by multimodality. The situation is changing from the single language text to multimodality which is combined by language, color, image, sound, etc. The traditional method to analyze mono-modality is out of time. Multimodal discourse analysis emerged at the right moment. Referring to Halliday's SFG, Kress and Van Leeuwen extended the three metafunctions, which are ideational, interpersonal, textual metafunction, to three meanings, which are representational, interactive, compositional meaning respectively. This is called Visual Grammar. It provides theoretical framework and analysis method for MDA.As a part of Olympic Games, Winter Olympic Games have the characteristics of globalization and universality. Emblems are the symbol of this game. Its design reflects the Olympic theme and the local culture and history of the hosting country. With the development of Olympic Games, emblems are indispensable. They play an important role in expressing the Olympic spirit and Olympic culture. They carry different cultures of different countries. The former researches of emblems focus on aesthetics, design,and history. However, an emblem includes words, colors, images and other social semiotics. It is a typical multimodal discourse.With the theoretical framework of Visual Grammar(VG) put forward by Kress and Van Leeuwen(1996), this study selects 23 Winter Olympic emblems from 1924-2018 as the examples. Qualitative method and quantitative method are used. How different social semiotic combine to express meaning is explored from three meanings.Meanwhile, the expression of local culture, geography and spirit is analyzed.The multimodal analysis of Winter Olympic emblems will help the viewers understand and grasp the deeper spiritual connotation of these emblems. At the same time, the designer can get some idea from this. This study opens a new perspective for the research of Winter Olympic emblems. It has a prominent role in enriching multimodal discourse analysis.