A Comparative Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of Chinese And American Coca-cola Video Commercials

As we are living in an era of increasingly scarce attentional resources,commercial designers spare no effort to draw audience's attention in a limited space by making the utmost of visual,auditory and other sensory stimulation.However,the previous multimodal studies of commercials are mainly confined to the study of language and image without equally paying attention to the study of audio mode such as music and sound effect.In order to illuminate the multimodal nature of video commercials,by sampling 10 American and 10 Chinese Coca-Cola video commercials,the author conducts a comparative multimodal discourse analysis within the modified framework constituted by Visual Grammar and Audio Grammar,and tentative explanations for such distinctions are also offered.The visual and audio modalities observed in the commercials complement each other to form a meaningful whole.The visual modality(including image and text)plays the leading role of communicating messages and emotions with rich expressive power.As to the audio modality(including music,sound effect and verbal languages),except for improving the aesthetic value of commercials,it is conducive to reinforcing and highlighting the product features.Meanwhile,it is found that both the American and Chinese Coca-Cola commercials are inclined to adopt low angles frequently in the presentation of coke bottles with high modality to gild this brand and promote the symbolic values of goods.Moreover,American video commercials do not rely on literal descriptions in view of the low occurrence rate of verbal languages(including monologue,voice-over and dialogue)and high occurrence of music and theme songs.In contrast,verbal languages(especially speech repetitions)are prevalent in Chinese commercials.The cultural reasons for causing the multimodal differences are partly reflected in the value orientation of video commercials:in most cases,by presenting a perfect harmonious images of friends or family members frequently,the Chinese commercials lay their stress on uniformity and group interests while American commercials often adopt uniqueness and personal accomplishments as selling appeals.Furthermore,in comparison to Americans' direct,forthright even blunt way in expression,Chinese people are accustomed to indirect and euphemistic ways of expression.This research may not only prove the great value of multimodal discourses analysis,but also may enable ad designers to utilize appropriate advertising strategies in different countries.