A Contrastive Study Of Multimodal Text Cohesion

With the emergence of multimodal texts,instead of using the pure verbal text,the construction of meaning also uses the synergy produced by linguistic semiosis and non-linguistic semiosis,which relies on cohesion.However,most of the previous multimodal discourse researches focused on analyzing the form and the meaning construction of different modes,rarely probing into the cohesion between visual mode and verbal mode.This thesis tries to explore and compare the multimodal text cohesion between multimodal texts in Chery's and Buick's official websites via Zhang Delu's multimodal text cohesion theory.Through qualitative method and quantitative method,the author analyzes cohesive devices and summarizes cohesive relations in the two official websites,and then discusses the similarities and differences in multimodal text cohesion.This research finds out that two kinds of images exist in the two official websites,that is,picture and icon.The images form three kinds of cohesive relations with their corresponding texts:(1)the single cohesive relation,(2)the dual cohesive relation and(3)the triple cohesive relation.In Chery's official website,three kinds of single cohesive relations,three kinds of dual cohesive relations and two kinds of triple cohesive relations are discovered,while in Buick's official website,two kinds of single cohesive relations,two kinds of dual cohesive relations and one kind of triple cohesive relation exist.Through comparison,this thesis gets three major findings.First,the frequently occurred cohesive relations in both official websites are the cohesive relation of co-referentiality,the cohesive relation of co-extension and the cohesive relation of co-classification,in which the cohesive relation of co-referentiality is of the highest frequency.Compared with these cohesive relations,the cohesive relation of contrast and the cohesive relation of hierarchy relation show up neither in Chery's official website nor in Buick's.Second,in both Chinese and American automobile official websites,producers prefer to apply the cohesive relation of co-referentiality to organize the relation between visual mode and verbal mode and to realize the connection between images and texts,so as to achieve promotion effect.Third,this research demonstrates that it is feasible to adopt Zhang Delu's multimodal text cohesion theory as an approach to study cohesion in automobile advertisements.This research obtains certain innovation.Firstly,this research takes multimodal texts in Chery's and Buick's official websites as research objects to explore cohesive relations.Through contrastive study,it elaborates the similarities and differences in multimodal text cohesion between the two official websites.This provides a new approach to multimodal discourse analysis of automobile advertisements.Secondly,this research is under the guidance of Zhang Delu's multimodal text cohesion theory,which broadens the scope of applied research of Zhang's theory.