A Multimodal Discourse Analysis On The Belt And Road Initiative Promotional Videos

Since China put forward the Belt and Road Initiative(BRI)in 2013,more and more countries and international organizations have joined in the Initiative,and its influence has been expanding.In this process,the promotional videos have played an important role in publicity of BRI.At the same time,with the development of technology and theory in the field of linguistic research,the analysis of semiotic resources for meaning transfer has expanded from verbal modality to multimodal ones,including language,image,and sound.And multimodal discourse analysis tends to be mature.The present thesis takes Halliday's systemic functional grammar,Kress and van Leeuwen's visual grammar and auditory grammar,and Zhang Delu's multimodal synergy theory as the theoretic framework,selects three representative and influential promotional videos on BRI,and employs the software of Multimodal Discourse Analysis for Videos(MMAV)and Cool Edit Pro to mark and transcribe the resources of verbal mode,visual mode and auditory mode in the selected videos,aiming to explore the features and meaning construction of different modalities,the relationships among different modalities in the videos,and how the themes of BRI are delivered to the audience.Through analysis,the main findings of this thesis are as follows:In verbal modality,in order to convey the theme of BRI to the audience,in view of ideational meaning,the material process is mainly used to describe the benefits of the initiative for the countries and regions along the route.The actor in most material clauses is BRI or its substitute phrases,which shows the great influence of the Road and Belt project and the development it brings to the world.But the bearers of the actions and other circumstance elements are often diversified.This gives the audience a more comprehensive and detailed understanding of the specific information and content of BRI.From the perspective of interpersonal meaning,with the analysis of modality,it is found that modal words are rarely used in the videos,which reduces the sense of distance between the audience and the videos,and makes them in an equal position,thus helps to achieve the promotional effect.From the perspective of textual meaning,the simple linear thematic progression mode improves the audience's understanding of themes of the videos in a simple,powerful and impressive way.In visual modality,the thesis takes shot as the unit for analysis and finds that the shot types are rich and infectious.The shots of the real scenes enhance the credibility of the BRI,while the shots of visionary scenes deepen the audience's understanding of the abstract content.From the standpoint of representational meaning,it is found that action processand symbolic process accounts for a large proportion.The action processes are usually about scenes of construction and communication,showing the benefits and changes that Road and Belt project brings to the countries along the route,displaying the exchange of cultures of different peoples,introducing to the audience the historical background,and necessity of the project,constructing the thematic meanings of interconnection and benefit-sharing expressed in the promotional videos.Symbolic processes make the videos' themes clear and enhance the audience's understanding of the essence of BRI.From the standpoint of interactive meaning,the visual elements are important in creating atmosphere and evoking feelings.Concerning the dimension of contact,offer act is the main type.It provides the audience with detailed information about the Initiative and also leaves more space for the audience to think.Concerning social distance,the long shot gives the grand blueprint of BRI,improving the audience's overall understanding of the initiative,while the medium and close shots show details of the Initiative and deepen the understanding of specific aspects of BRI.Concerning attitude,the frontal-angle is often used to make the audience feel involved,while the high-angle shots leave the audience more space to think and respond.Concerning modality,natural coding orientation and sensory coding orientation are the most common types of shot.The shots of natural scenes display the real world to the audience,and strengthen the audience's confidence in the bright future of BRI.The shots of sensory ones improve the appeal of the videos.In views of compositional meaning,which is of the information value level,most of the positive and meaningful represented participants are on the right or bottom of images in the promotional videos,which can make BRI more realistic with its practicability highlighted.While from the aspect of salience,the relatively valuable parts of BRI are introduced,which mainly focus on the presentation in the images and video clips.With the shooting angle changes and details,these elements are organized as a whole,so as to achieve the purpose of introducing the BRI in both detailed and comprehensive way.From the viewpoint of framing,most of the shots are real scenes with no lines to cut them.This displays the prosperous scenes of BRI and the joyful and peaceful scenes of a new life.In auditory modality,as for audio perspective,it can be illuminated that in the selected promotional videos,the voice-over narrations are usually in the foreground while the music and sound effect that create mood are generally put in the background.The loudness of sound in the selected promotional videos indicates the intimate distance and personal distance.And for the modality of sound,the sensory orientation music used in the promotional videos accompany with the development and change of verbal and visual modality.And the naturalistic orientation music constructs the real scene of shot to increase the sense of participation.From the perspective of coordination of multi-modalities,it turns out that the interactions between visual-modality and aural-modality include relations of integration,complementarity,and non-complementarity.And for each category,there are severalsub-contains helping further explain the interactions among different modalities.It has been found that it is the variety of interactions between visual-modality and aural-modality that helps realize the expected effects and then construct the overall meaning of the selected promotional videos.The thesis attempts to analyze the symbolic resources of various modes in the the promotional videos of BRI,which is a significant try.