A Multimodal Discourse Analysis On The Senior High School English Textbooks Published By FLTRP

The concept of discourse analysis was first proposed by Harris,an American structuralist linguist,in 1952.Traditional discourse analysis centers upon oral or written linguistic system and semantic structure,focusing on monomodal discourse.However,with the development of social economy and the advancement of computer science and technology,a single text combines many kinds of symbolic systems to express meaning,such as pictures,audio-visual,sound,printing and so on.As a new branch of linguistics,multimodal discourse analysis has greatly expanded the research contents,methods and means of discourse analysis by linguists and scholars,and has become one of the research hotspots of linguists.Multimodal discourse analysis,with its unique theoretical system and analytical methods,has been gradually applied to the study of advertisement discourse,classroom language teaching,language textbooks discourse,court language debates and other social behaviors and discourses.As an important educational discourse,English textbooks are the main means for teachers to design and implement teaching activities.They are also the main source for students to obtain the knowledge of language and culture and improve more language skills.For a long time,the analysis and research of textbooks have attracted much attention from English teaching practitioners and scholars.Moreover,we can find that multimodality has become a prominent feature of most modern textbooks in which a variety of symbolic resources,such as language words,pictures,tables,videos,sounds,colors and so on,work together to realize meanings.In addition,under the background of increasingly changing and developing society,we should not only pay more attention to the traditional text-centered pattern but also other symbol resources in the current English teaching process,and to cultivate and improve the students’ interpretation of symbol resource and multi-literacy.In view of the above,the author selects senior high school English textbooks of FLTRP edition as the corpus including compulsory and elective parts,a total of 8 volumes,which is published in 2016.Then,the author takes visual grammar theory proposed by Kress and Van Leeuwen and image-text relationship theory proposed by Martinec and Salway as the analysis framework to conduct multimodal discourse analysis on senior high school English textbooks published by the above press.This paper analyzes the multimodal symbol resources,graphic design and meaning construction of senior high school English textbooks of FLTRP edition.The main research questions are as follows: Firstly,in senior high school English textbooks published by FLTRP,how are the three meanings of visual images reflected and realized based on the theory of visual grammar? Secondly,based on the theory of image-text relation proposed by Martinec and Salway,what kind of image-text relationship exists in the textbooks discourse of FLTRP edition and how are they reflected respectively?Through the detailed analysis of senior high school English textbooks published by FLTRP,the final findings are as follows: Firstly,text and image modality are closely related in this edition of textbooks,which are combined to realize the construction of three major meanings in visual grammar,namely representational meaning,interactive meaning and compositional meaning.Visual images in senior high school English textbook of FLTRP edition fully embody three major meanings of visual grammar.As for representational meaning,narrative process is more than conceptual process in representational meaning.In the process of narrative representation,the visual images involved in narrative process embody more in the action and reaction process,less in speech and mental process.And the participants in the visual images mainly represent the real situation in front of the readers by forming the vector to express the action for narrative representation.As for interactive meaning,most images achieve proper contact by providing or demanding information.Among them,pictures of providing information are much more than those of demanding information,which in fact embodies equal status relation,while charts of providing information are less than those of demanding information.Most of the charts and tables are left for students to complete,which is conducive to mobilizing students’ enthusiasm and initiative in learning and forming a good interactive relationship with readers.Personal distance and social distance account more than impersonal distance.At the aspect of perspective,the visual image is mainly from the front and horizontal perspective,which helps readers to obtain information more intuitively and conveniently,and embodies equal status relation as well.As for the compositional meaning,the information value of visual image focuses on the new and real information.While,the text focuses on displaying known information values.The visual image composition of senior high school English textbook of FLTRP edition is reasonable and has a maximum salience.The size type in the visual image is appropriate,and the color saturation and pixel of image are high.The framing of visual images in the textbook discourse is composed of lines,which is separated and overlapped with the text.And they are closely related to the subject information of the text,which is helpful for readers to read and comprehend the image information better.Secondly,based on Martinec and Salway’s theoretical framework of image-text relationship,senior high school English textbook of FLTRP edition fully embodies the status relation and logic-semantic relation between the image and text.As for status relation between image and text,there is more unequal status relation between image and text,which shows that image is subordinate to text.It is not difficult to find that the text modality plays an important role in the discourse of the textbooks.As for the logic-semantic relation between image and text,image and text modality mainly indicate more expansion relation,with less projection relation.In the elaboration relation,there are more exemplification where taking the text as an example is more than taking the image as an example,that is to say,the text modality plays a dominant role in the discourse of senior high school English textbook of FLTRP edition.This study will help teachers and students to better use senior high school English textbooks,to understand and make full use of various symbol resources in the textbooks for English teaching,and to strengthen classroom teaching effect to enhance students’ interest in English learning.It also can help teachers to pay attention to multimodal symbol resources,meaning construction,graphic design in the textbooks,and help students to cultivate multi-literacy.Finally,the teaching goal can be better achieved.At the same time,this study also has some references and implications for textbook compilers: in the arrangement of textbook images and texts,more attention should be paid to the students’ cognitive characteristics and the functions of textbooks.