Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of The Interactive Meaning In The Documentary The New Stories Of Zhejiang

With the advent of the information age,people can comprehensively use images,language,actions and other modalities to communicate more effectively.Multimodal discourse analysis has become one of the hotspots in linguistics research.The documentary The New Stories of Zhejiang,as a typical dynamic multimodal discourse,is selected as the research object of the present study.On the basis of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar,Kress & van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar as well as Royce’s Inter-semiotic Complementarity theory,this thesis employs the quantitative and qualitative research methods and the multimodal software EDUICO Language Annotator(ELAN after)to analyze the interactive meaning in the documentary The New Stories of Zhejiang from a multimodal perspective: firstly,how the visual mode in the documentary constructs the interactive meaning is analyzed based on four elements in Visual Grammar,namely contact,social distance,perspective and modality.Secondly,how the verbal mode in the documentary constructs the interactive meaning is analyzed based on the two aspects in Systemic Functional Grammar,namely mood and modality systems.Finally,how visual and verbal modes in the documentary cooperate with each other to construct the interactive meaning is analyzed in the light of Inter-semiotic Complementarity theory.Through the analysis,major findings of this study are summarized as follows: in the analysis part of visual modes,as for the element of “contact”,the frequency of “offer”images(57.96%)is higher than that of “demand”(42.04%),which indicates that the documentary producers intend to tell viewers about stories of China’s development in the New Era and to leave them time and space to think.In terms of social distance,the proportion of long shots(36.36%)and medium shots(38.26%)is much higher than that of close shots,which can guide the audience to have an objective view of China’s development and changes.In consideration of perspective,from the horizontal angle,the documentary producers are more inclined to choose the frontal angle(63.45%)than the oblique angle to enhance viewers’ sense of participation in the hiking trip of Mr.and Mrs.Mike Bates(protagonists of this documentary)in Zhejiang.From the vertical angle,the ratio of eye-to-eye angles(79.26%)is higher than that of high and low angles,which reflects the equal interactive relationship between viewers and the represented participants in the documentary.In the view of modality,a large number of visual modes are of medium and high modality value,accounting for 30.59% and 56.08% respectively,to show the development achievements of contemporary China,while a small number of visual modes with low modality value reproduce the backwardness of China in the past.Through the comparison,viewers can perceive the great changes that have taken place in China and,to a certain extent,change their prejudice against China.In the analysis part of verbal modes,the declarative mood(86.64%)is widely used in the documentary while the interrogative mood(10.53%)and imperative mood(2.83%)are adopted less frequently,which indicates that the documentary mainly conveys to viewers the information on various aspects of contemporary China’s development to viewers.On the other hand,verbal modes expressing high modality value(53.73%)account for the highest percentage,which guarantees the objectivity and authenticity of the information provided by the documentary.In the analysis part of visual-verbal relations,the relationship between visual and verbal modes in the documentary mainly involves three aspects: reinforcement of address,attitudinal congruence and attitudinal dissonance.Two kinds of modes cooperate to construct the interactive meaning of The New Stories of Zhejiang,thus viewers can understand China more objectively and comprehensively by watching the documentary.The present study demonstrates that multimodal discourse analysis is applicable in interpreting the interactive meaning of the documentary The New Stories of Zhejiang,and expands the research scope of multimodal discourse analysis to some extent.Furthermore,this research provides a new perspective for viewers to appreciate the documentary.