Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of China's National Publicity Film

With the enhancement of the comprehensive strength and improvement in economic status,China plays an important role in the aspects of international politics,economy,culture and diplomacy.However,since Chinese culture and the socialist system that our country upholds differ from the political ideologies implemented by western countries,some western media begin to demonize China's national image.The production of China's National Publicity Film indicates that our country has taken initiatives to display our country's soft power with great confidence,actively built a positive national image and struggled to gain an international voice.The application of the Internet and multi-media has paved the way for the appearance of a new discourse,namely multimodal discourse.The current research employs Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics and Kress&van Leeuwen's Visual Grammar as a theoretical basis by utilizing qualitative and quantitative methods to conduct multimodal discourse analysis of China's National Publicity Film with the aim to answer three questions:1.How does verbal modality in China's National Publicity Film construct meaning?2.How does visual modality in China's National Publicity Film construct meaning?3.What kind of relationships do verbal modality and visual modality in Chinca's.National Publicity Film reflect?From the angles of ideational function interpersonal function and textual function of Systemic Functional Linguistics,the research analyzes how the verbal modality constructs meaning.By employing O'Halloran's filmic segment method,the publicity film is cut into 599 shots.Taking 23 shots as the research data,this research discusses how visual modality constructs meaning based on representational meaning,interactional meaning and compositional meaning of Visual Grammar and an analysis of 3 successive shots is conducted.In the end,the relationships between verbal modality and visual modality by choosing 14 contininuous shots are discussed.This research finds that:1.Verbal modality constructs a true,equal and harmonious national image from material,relational and mental process in ideational function;through mood and modality system in interpersonal function,the film shows the objectivity and justice of national image;via marked theme in textual function,the film truly reflects what has taken place in the history of China.2.Visual modality reveals the relationship between the represented participants and the interactive participants from representational meaning;through contact,distance,perspective and modality in interactive meaning,the film constructs the panorama of China's current image,which shortens the distance of China with other nations.And the use of high modality manifests the pride and confidence China holds towards her achievements.The compositional meaning is realized by information value and salience.An analysis of three successive shots reveals how different modalities coordinate in establishing national image.3.In the publicity film,the relationships between verbal modality and visual modality are complementary and non-complementary relationships and the proportion of complementary relationship is higher than that of non-complementary relationship.This research enlarges the applicable scope for multimodal discourse analysis theory and provides a new approach for the study of China's national image,enables people to have abetter understanding of this publicity film and improves people's multi-literacy.