A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of TV Public Service Advertisements

As a multimodal discourse,advertisement has been researched by scholars from different fields at home and abroad.However,most of them only focused on the verbal text and regarded it as the research object,neglecting other semiotic resources such as visual images,color,sound,music etc.included in the multimodal discourse of advertisements,which can't convey a complete meaning of advertising discourse.As a particular form,public service advertisements regard the mass as the service object,aiming at conveying public welfare concept to promote cultural and ideological progress.As a multimodal discourse,TV public service advertisements are composed of various kinds of semiotic recourses and the integration of these semiotic recourses can convey a complete meaning to the audience.Based on the limitations of the previous studies,the present study chooses 30 pieces of TV public service advertisements as the data,according to the framework of multimodal discourse analysis to explore the following questions:1.How does the verbal text of TV public service advertisements realize three meta-functions of language?2.How does the visual image of TV public service advertisements realize three meta-functions of visual mode?3.What is the relation between the verbal text and visual image of TV public service advertisements and how do they work together to construct a complete meaning?The present study mainly analyzes and integrates the verbal text and visual image of TV public service advertisements by adopting the qualitative and quantitative methods based on the theoretical framework of Halliday's systemic functional grammar,Kress&van Leeuwen's visual grammar and inter-semiotic complementary theory of Royce.Firstly,we will analyze how the verbal text realizes three meta-functions of language,which is based on Halliday's systemic functional grammar.Secondly,we will analyze how the visual image realizes three meta-functions of visual mode based on Kress&van Leeuwen's visual grammar.Finally,the theory of inter-semiotic complementarity of Royce helps to analyze the relation between verbal text and visual image to explore how they together to construct a complete meaning.The findings imply that,the verbal texts of TV public service advertisements convey specific information to the audience,and the visual images can represent the meaning conveyed by the verbal texts more vividly and profoundly.The integration of them can sublime the meaning of advertisements.Briefly,verbal texts and visual images can work together to construct a multimodal with complete meaning.To some extent,this study has its significance.To begin with,different from the previous studies,the present study analyzes the advertising discourse from a multimodal perspective,which broadens the research field of multimodal discourse and enriches the research angle.Moreover,the present study not only enriches the researching perspectives on public service advertisements,but also proves the feasibility and applicability of the theoretical framework of multimodal discourse on TV public service advertisements.Thirdly,this study not only discusses how verbal text and visual image realize the meaning respectively,but also integrates them together to explore how they construct a complete meaning to the audience,which can make the audience understand the meaning of TV public service advertisements comprehensively and profoundly.