A Comparative Study On Interactive Meaning Between American And Chinese Corporate Publicity Films From Multimodal

With the advent of the information age,people's communication ways tend to be diversified,and people not only transmit information through language,but also express integrated meanings through images,gestures,music and other symbolic resources.Multimodal Discourse Analysis(MDA)is one of ways to analyze many kinds of discourses by using more than two modes,such as verbal,visual and auditory mode.Corporate Publicity Film(CPF)is a typical multimodal text that includes many modes,such as verbal,visual,audio mode and other semiotics,which is one of the most important and effective ways for corporations to expand their influence in foreign and domestic market.Although many kinds of discourses have been analyzed from the multimodal discourses,for instance,posters,advertisements,movies,newspapers,magazines and so on,there is still little research on corporate publicity films.The present thesis chose 60 American and Chinese CPFs in English version from companies' official websites and other public platforms as the research subjects,by using the quantitative and qualitative approach.Based on combination of Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar(SFG)and Kress and Van Leeuwen's Visual Grammar(VG),this thesis attempts to carry out an analysis of the interactive meaning conveyed by verbal and visual modes of the American and Chinese CPFs from multimodal perspective,focusing on six items,including mood,modality,person,contact,social distance and perspective,trying to state the similarities and differences between American and Chinese CPFs and find out the reasons behind the differences.Major findings from this thesis reveal that interactive meaning can be realized from verbal and visual mode in American and Chinese CPFs,they have some similarities.Both of them tend to apply declarative mood,low and medium modal operators and first person in verbal part,and they are likely to adopt “offer” act and eye-eye angle in visual part.The results imply that American and Chinese corporations devote to introduce themselves through offering information,and keep the equal powers with audience,which can close the social distance between them.When it comes to the differences,in verbal mode,American CPFs tend to use more low and medium modal operators and the second person than Chinese CPFs,and Chinese CPFs apply more high value operators and the third person than American CPFs.While in visual part,American CPFs are likely to use close up shots and frontal angles.Chinese CPFs incline to employ medium shots and oblique angles.In addition,the reasons of the differences can be interpreted by Hofstede's cultural dimensions,including individualism/collectivism,power distance and uncertainty avoidance,which can reflect person,contact,perspective and other aspects in CPFs.The results of this thesis may give some implications to corporations and readers,which can not only help readers have a better understanding for the theory and application of MDA,but also provide some available suggestions to corporations.It hopes that the suggestions can help the industry and academia enhance the recognition about CPFs through the analysis of interactive meaning under the perspective of MDA,which is meant to provide theoretical value and significance for the planning,creation and dissemination of the CPFs.