A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of Garbage Classification Poster Based On Visual Grammar

The rapid development and upgrading of technology and network leads people to the information age where multimodal messages containing not only pure language but also images,sounds and videos begin to emerge in great amount.Based on this,linguists have gradually paid more attention to the multimodal discourse analysis.Inspired by Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar,Kress and van Leeuwen proposed a theoretical framework called Visual Grammar at the end of 20th century for image analysis,which breaks the limitation of verbal communication analysis and offers theoretical guidance for the multimodal discourse analysis.In recent years,the escalation of climate change highlights the importance of environmental protection.As one of the crucial issues in environment problem,garbage disposal has always worried the international community.On July 1st,2019 the policy of garbage classification was implemented in Shanghai city of China.In order to make citizens fully informed of the policy and also to set a good example for the other cities,high priority has been given to the propaganda work and because of its convenience and effectiveness,posters draw special attention from the related authorities.Therefore,research on how to produce an attractive as well as persuasive poster is of tremendous significance.On the basis of Visual Grammar proposed by Kress and van Leeuwen,this study focuses on the Representational Meaning,Interactive Meaning and Compositional Meaning of the 40 GCP(Garbage Classification Poster)samples from the perspectives of qualitative and quantitative analysis.It is found that,in terms of Representational Meaning,the 6 types of processes appear 150 times in the total 40 samples,of which the Classificational Process takes up the largest proportion while the Mental and Speech process the least.All these processes work together to present to the viewers a harmonious living environment resulting from garbage classification and attempt to confirm them that garbage classification is beneficial.In terms of Interactive Meaning,in most of the posters,a reliable offering image with high modality is depicted.And routinely,the long shot and frontal eye-to-eye angle are employed to relate the represented participants to the viewers both objectively and publicly.In terms of Compositional Meaning,elements in the posters would be framed into different groups so as to realize its specialized function.The title of the poster in most cases are made salient due to its size,and its position on the top serves as something ideal.The scenes represented by the six types of processes are placed at the bottom serving as a practical result or example illustrating the title.At the end of the thesis,a summary about all the findings is given along with the limitations of this research and the implications for future research.