Construction Of Cultural Soft Power In Chinese And English Promos Of Bidding For The Olympic Games From The Multimodal Perspective

With the rapid development of multimedia technology,language is no longer the only form of expressing ideas and conveying information.Many symbolic resources,such as sound,image,action,color and so on,are playing an increasingly important role,so multimodal discourse analysis has emerged.As a typical multimodal discourse,the Olympic promo is an important opportunity to construct cultural soft power.Cultural soft power manifests in cultural vitality,cultural cohesion,cultural attractiveness,cultural productivity,cultural communication and national image affinity and so on.From the multimodal perspective,this thesis studies how cultural soft power is constructed through a variety of symbol resources in Beijing and London promo.Through the multimodal analysis and comparison of two promos,this thesis summarizes the similarities and differences between Chinese and English cultural soft power construction,and the conclusion is listed as follows:Similarities are mainly reflected: two promos present beautiful natural environment,people’s enthusiasm to participate in sports,people’s facial expressions,artistic charm,splendid historic buildings and some life scenes.Differences are mainly demonstrated as six aspects.Firstly,in the choice of characters,Beijing’s promo takes ordinary people as the center,but middle-aged men seldom appear;while London’s promo has specially selected many celebrities and middle-aged people.Secondly,in the selection of lens,Beijing’s promo uses high angle to present ancient buildings;London’s promo adopts eye-level angle.Thirdly,in presenting cultural vitality,Beijing’s promo involves traditional projects with Chinese characteristic;London’s promo emphasizes ordinary people do some sports similar to the Olympic events.Fourthly,in presenting cultural communication,Beijing’s promo highlights traditional elements to gain cultural identification;London’s promo fully considers the proportion of British colored people to present the status of racial harmony.Fifthly,in presenting cultural cohesion,Chinese traditional buildings pay attention to the artistic effect of symmetry;the peripheral shape of British ancient building is generally irregular.Sixthly,in presenting cultural attraction,Beijing’s promo displays many modern elements;London’s promo presents the city’s orderly daily life by many living scenes.In short,similarities in two promos are rooted in the common pursuit for the Olympic spirit;while differences are because of the political,economic and cultural differences between China and Britain.This study constructs a multimodal analysis framework that integrates multiple symbolic resources.Meanwhile,this study also provides a new perspective for constructing cultural soft power through multimodal analysis of the promos in the future.