Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of English Visual Poetry From The Perspective Of Visual Grammar

Multimodal discourse analysis originated from the West in the 1990s and has dramatically become one of the hot topics of study in the field of linguistics,which signifies that discourse analysis has evolved into a new stage,namely,from text analysis into comprehensive analysis.With the rapid improvement of information technology and multimedia,traditional mode of discourse analysis failed to meet the needs of comprehensive and systematic discourse analysis.As a new tendency of discourse analysis,multimodal discourse has become an important way of expressing ideas and feelings."Visual poetry",also known as "pattern poetry",is a special form of poetry which conveys poetic implications by means of careful arrangement and well-organized textual composition.Unlike ordinary discourse,visual poetry consists of texts,images and other common social symbols so as to realize the expression of meaning.Visual poetry is a typical type of multimodal discourse,which embodies the ideological connotations and aesthetic features of poetry.Over the years,visual poetry has been studied from the perspectives of traditional literature,aesthetics,etc.,but is rarely dealt with from the perspectives of linguistics.Based on Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics and the theoretical framework of Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar,the present study analyzes and studies the implications embedded in languages and images of English visual poetry with specific examples.The study explores visual poetry from the following aspects:First,it expounds the relationship between systemic functional grammar and visual grammar;Second,it is devoted to the multimodal discourse analysis of English visual poetry from the perspectives of representational meaning,interactive meaning and compositional meaning;and it explains and unscrambles the English visual poetry at all levels so as to excavate the representational meaning,interactive meaning and compositional meaning of visual poetry.Last,it explores how language and other non-verbal visual symbols transfer and constitute textual meaning in a comprehensive way in visual poetry.The study has made the following researches:First and foremost,compared with traditional poetry,visual poetry exhibits distinct multimodal characteristics,thus it is necessary to combine the linguistic symbols with visual symbols such as images so as to thoroughly understand the connotations of multimodal discourse;At the same time,multimodal discourse analysis and visual grammar have a strong explanatory power over English visual poetry;Furthermore,multimodal discourse analysis and visual grammar not only help readers uncover the profound meanings of visual symbols,but also enable them to deeply appreciate the unique artistic beauty and literary values of visual poetry.