| Technical advancement has brought changes to people’s way of communication,and traditional language-based communication has gradually given way to the multimodality of communication.Therefore,in addition to language itself,images,sounds,videos,gestures and other symbols are also integrated into human communication owing to the development of information technology.Literature review shows that multimodal discourse analysis is widely used in static discourses such as advertisements,posters,textbooks etc,but few on dynamic discourse.Currently,classroom discourse involves language mode,action mode and visual mode,etc.It is a kind of typical dynamic multimodal discourse.Although many scholars have carried out multi-modal discourse analysis of classroom discourse,few have analyzed the modes presented in the classroom.Analyzing the modalities presented in classroom teaching will have important enlightenment significance for teaching practice Thus,inspired by Systemic Functional Grammar proposed by Halliday(1978),Visual Grammar put forward by Kress & van Leeuwen(1996),and Synthetic Framework of Multimodal Discourse Analysis presented by Zhang Delu(2009),this thesis attempts to analyze the teaching videos which won the special and first prizes in College English Teaching Contest,adopting qualitative and quantitative approaches with the help of video annotation software ELAN 5.9 in order to study the characteristics and distribution of the college English classroom multimodal discourse,and to discuss how to construct the representation,the interaction and the composition meaning of multiple modal resources.To achieve the these research objectives,this thesis aims to answer the following questions:(1)what are the characteristics of multimodal discourse in the College English Teaching Contest?(2)How frequently are the modalities distributed in different teaching stages in the College English Teaching Contest?(3)How do different modalities interact with each other to construct representational,interactive and compositional meanings?The major findings are as follows.First,as one of the multimodal dynamic discourses,the College English Teaching Contest has integrated several semiotic resources,including language,images,gaze and gestures.The structure of the College English Teaching Contest is as follows: class beginning-teaching objective-main content-discussion and debate-finish-assignment.Language,gaze and gesture run through the whole teaching process.Second,through the annotation,it is found that modality features demonstrate different complexity in different stages.At both the beginning and the end of the class,the modal complexity is lower,while in the teaching objectives,main content,and discussion and debate stages,the modal complexity is higher.In general,in the College English Teaching Contest,oral English is the most frequently used modality,followed by gaze and gesture.Third,teachers construct the meaning of representation,interaction,and composition based on the collocation and interaction of diverse semiotic resources.Different modalities express different meanings.Representational meaning falls into two categories:(1)narrative process and(2)conceptual process.Generally,narrative process accounts for a much higher proportion than conceptual process;interaction meaning is mainly realized by eye contact,distance,attitude,and modality;composition meaning is mostly realized through the arrangement of information value,significance and framing.In the process of constructing meaning,the relationship among different modality resources is complementary,which is the essence of the relationship between foregrounding and background.This thesis is of great significance in both theory and practice.In respect of theory,it,on the one hand,verifies the applicability of visual grammar to dynamic discourse;on the other hand,it offers a new viewpoint on classroom multimodal discourse.Practically,the research results are of certain reference significance for improving the multimodal reading ability of modern English teaching,providing reference for college English teaching,and providing inspiration for teachers,so that they can use multimodality of communication in a better way.Nonetheless,certain limitations also exist,which calls on improvements in future research. |
PDF Full Text Request