Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of Entrepreneurial Image Construction

Entrepreneurs are rarely observed as individuals per se but as the personification of the company.The relationship between entrepreneurial image and company image are intricately interwoven.This thesis provides a multimodal discourse analysis of the entrepreneurial image construction of Jobs,the late CEO of Apple Inc.The general research orientation is decomposed into three research questions:(1)What is Jobs' s entrepreneurial image that is constructed by the third party? And how is it constructed?(2)What is the entrepreneurial image that Jobs constructed for himself? And how is it constructed?(3)Is there a divergence in the images constructed by the two sorts of data? How do we interpret this divergence?To address the above research questions,two sorts of data are collected accordingly,the first of which are movies,biographies and reports that are created by a third-party to “recreate” or “reproduce” the image of Jobs,while the latter of which are recordings of interviews,launch events,speeches that Jobs himself actually participated in.We define the first kind of data with the term third-party data,the second primal data.Incorporating Kendon's gesture analysis system in the in-built system of MMA Video software,we designed a customized catalog for this specific study,according to which the selected data are transcribed and annotated in terms of speech elements and gesture elements.The theoretical framework of this study is Rapport Management Theory(at a micro level)and International Business Communication Model(at a macro level).A systemic analysis of the speech elements and gesture elements show that(1)In the third-party data,conflict talks are a very salient feature.When conversing with interlocutors of different power ranks,Jobs adopts different rapport management strategies and has deviant speech features.Jobs' s entrepreneurial image constructed by the third-party features aggressiveness,ambitiousness,innovativeness and vision.(2)In the primal data,polite and cooperative talks are the mainstream speech style.Interpersonal rapport becomes a prioritized consideration.Jobs' s entrepreneurial image in the primal data features straight-talking style,rough-edge personality,good sense of humor and acute business insights.(3)The reason for the deviant speech styles in the third-party data and primal data is that the former,which mostly are movies,tells stories in a dramatic way which highlights the conflict scenes to create climax;while the latter,which mostly are recordings of public events open to the mass media,are probably rehearsed and therefore highlights cooperative talks.The images constructed in the two sorts of data show a unity of opposites,which is the result of joint effects of American national culture,business culture and Jobs' s personal culture.