A Study On English Automobile Advertisements From The Perspective Of Multimodality

Since multimodality was put forward in the 1960 s,more and more attention has been paid to it.With the theoretical framework of Halliday’s systemic functional grammar and Kress & van Leeuwen’s visual grammar,the selected advertisements,including the 70 th anniversary of the Aston Martin,Aston Martin Vanquish Zagato Volante,Ferrari Laferrari Aperta,the Audi RS 3,are analyzed from the perspective of multimodality with Kay O’Halloran’s Multimodal Analysis Video(MMA Video for short)software.The multimodal analyses of the four English automobile advertisements of the foreign luxury brands all focus on linguistic modality and visual modality,as well as the meaning conveyed to the audience.By using MMA Video,the data of these four advertisements are summarized and analyzed.In the ideational function of linguistic modality,material process is an important means of promoting cars in the English automobile advertisements.Material process in the advertisements delivers the car’s specific information to the audience,the dynamic performance of the car,the potential ideational meaning conveyed to the audience,in order to convince the audience to buy it.As for the interpersonal function,the declarative tone is the dominant one in the automobile advertisements,which can provide the audience with accurate information and correct data about the automobiles.As for the textual function,the derived theme is the commonly used propaganda method of dynamic advertisements.From the perspective of representational function under visual modality,narrative process is the most frequently used process in English automobile advertisements,which shows the moving status of the car and fully represents the excellent performance of the car,leaving the customer a good impression and establishing a connection.From the aspect of interactive function,the image act occurs with the highest frequency of offering act,which gives audiences more space to imagine.In terms of attitude,the oblique angle appears most frequently,which makes the audience more intuitive to understand the shape of the car.While from the aspect of social distance,medium and long shots are the two most frequently used ones in English automobile advertisements,which fully display the car brand and highlight the social relationship between cars and the audiences.As for the compositional function,the dynamic advertisements highlight the features of the cars through the description of car parts by means of scene changes.