A Multimodal Approach To The Interpersonal Meaning In Electronics Advertisements On Amazon

With the development of the Internet,e-commerce websites have developed into one of the most significant channels through which exchange of information and goods or services is made.Web advertisements are rich in multiple semiotic resources,such as visual images,verbal texts,and even voices,and are therefore multimodal.Web advertisements perform better in passing on information and realizing the interaction between advertisers and customers.Since the concept of multimodal discourse analysis(MDA)was put forward,overseas and domestic scholars have been keeping their eyes on the studies on multimodal discourse.The objects of these studies mainly cover posters,newspapers,advertisements,movies,and speeches.The study on web advertisements with a multimodal approach is still underdeveloped.Inspired by the three metafunctions of Systemic Functional Linguistics(SFL)proposed by Halliday,Kress and van Leeuwen put forward the concept of Visual Grammar(VG)in 1996 which explains three functions of visual images.The establishment of VG provides a theoretical foundation for visual analysis.Setting the theoretical foundation on the interpersonal meaning of SFL and the interactive meaning of VG,the author takes a both qualitative and quantitative method and analyzes the verbal texts and visual images in 51 pieces of electronics advertisement on Amazon.The major findings are as follows:(1)In terms of the Subject,advertisers frequently employ person pronouns as the Subject in order to narrow the psychological distance between advertisers and customers or to create conviction.Temporal operators are favored as the Finite,indicating constant and long-lasting features.With metaphor of mood,advertisers manage to realize different speech functions and purposes.Modality is mainly realized by modal operators and modal adjuncts.With modality,advertisers express their judgment toward given information with certainty in propositions,inclination to provide goods and services,or obligation required from customers.As for the value of modality,most modal operators are medium-value.This is attributed to the fact that they help to boost customer confidence in propositions or soften the mood in proposals.And the use of high-value and medium-value modal adjuncts in propositions indicates that advertisers are to some degree committed to the given information.(2)Offering images are preferred to be presented to customers as a piece of factual information.As for social distance,the preference for medium shot indicates that advertisers are intended to build a medium-level relationship that is neither too far from nor too close to customers.In this way,advertisers express their welcoming attitude and friendliness to customers.Within horizontal perspective,oblique angle is preferred to arouse interest and stimulate desire from customers by creating a sense of detachment.On the other hand,within vertical perspective,most images are presented with a high angle.With high angle,power is given to customers to imply customers are valued.The significance of this thesis lies in the fact that it is helpful for improving customers' multimodal literacy and providing guidance to domestic electronic brands when they are seeking opportunities in overseas markets.