A Legitimation Code Perspective On Knowledge Building In Health Science Popularization

With the improvement of living standards,an ever-growing number of people have been aware of the importance of a healthy lifestyle.The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China(CPC)and the State Council have published the Outline of the Healthy China2030 Plan,which puts forward the strategic tasks such as popularizing health knowledge and building a healthy living environment.It sheds light on the high regard for national health issues from the Chinese government,and improving the popularization of health knowledge is considered a prerequisite for the implementation of the Healthy China 2030 Plan.In view of this,the present thesis,considering the new trends of contemporary knowledge dissemination,investigates the linguistic features and legitimation devices of the popularization discourse for building popular health science and spreading a healthy mindset in new media represented by short videos.The present study is based on the proposition that Legitimation Code Theory(LCT)enables the revelation of the deep reasons for the nature of consistency in register features and in turn provides practical guidelines(Maton & Howard,2020).To verify it,at the macro-level of context,this thesis first employs the multidimensional analysis tool MAT1.3 to automatically annotate and analyze the language modes of 164 short videos.Composed of samples from two dominant text types,the mini-corpus is investigated on register features based on Multidimensional Analysis(MDA)proposed by Biber(1988).Then,20 respective samples that represent the two main types are selected for the subsequent quantitative and qualitative analyses in UAM Corpus Tool 3.With observing their code modalities in three dimensions of Specialization,Semantics,and Autonomy from LCT,this thesis aims to reveal the deep reasons behind their register features at the meso-level of knowledge-building practices.Finally,at the micro-level of consciousness,general principles and legitimate strategies are proposed to the practice of health science popularization.According to the statistics from MAT1.3 and SPSS19.0,general narrative exposition and involved persuasion are the two main text types in the corpus.The former mainly involves genres like popular science animations and research reports,while the latter has various forms,including speeches,interviews,podcasts mixed with animation and so on.They show their significantly different register features in Dimension 1(involved vs.informational discourse),Dimension 2(narrative vs.non-narrative concerns),Dimension 4(overt expression of persuasion),Dimension 5(abstract vs.non-abstract information),and Dimension 6(online informational elaboration)from MDA.Specifically,expository videos are characterized by informational discourse,non-narrative concerns,lack of overt expression of persuasion,abstract information,and weaker online informational elaboration,while persuasive videos represent involved discourse,more non-narrative concerns,overt expression of persuasion,non-abstract information and stronger online informational elaboration.Although both of them show the characteristics of explicit expressions in Dimension 3(context-independent vs.context-dependent discourse),the latter is featured in weaker context-independence,and there is a tendency for context-dependence.The above differences are reflected in the linguistic features and the legitimation codes of the two text types.In the conceptual framework of LCT,the study obtains these findings: in the dimension of Specialization,“Specialization codes” have an affinity bond with the register features of Dimensions 1,4 and 6,because general narrative exposition possesses “Knowledge code”with stronger epistemic relation,while involved persuasion belongs to “Elite code” combined with both epistemic relation and social relation;in the dimension of Semantics,“Semantic codes” of the two groups also correspond with their differences in register features on Dimension 3 and 5,since general narrative exposition symbolizes “Rhizomatic code” with larger semantic density and weaker context-dependence,whereas involved persuasion represents an intermediate state between “Prosaic code” to “Rarefied code” with less semantic density and moderate context-dependence;in the dimension of Autonomy,both are on behalf of “Sovereign code”,but the involved persuasion texts also appear one-way pathways and tours movement to other codes so as to produce coupling induction and build more integrated knowledge.The above findings imply that most popular health science in the form of animation and research report short videos tend to build more professional,academic,and high-density health knowledge,and their output of a large variety of generalized knowledge emphasizes the epistemic relation in the practice of popularization.Thus,audiences are in need of expository animations to unpack and repack the expertise.However,other short videos like speeches,interviews and podcasts mixed with animation attach much importance to the building of intelligible,attention-grabbing knowledge combining personal experience with situational contexts to a greater extent,which is conducive to integrated knowledge building.Also,they highly value the audiences’ emotions,cognition,and social roles through emotional communication with them.Finally,it is hoped that more popular health science short videos or other types of popularization short videos can accurately convey expertise and integrated knowledge,and then achieve the popularization of discourse with interactive communication,as well as knowledge accumulation of the public.In view of this,four discourse strategies are put forward,namely personification,recontextualization,engagement and questioning.This thesis has certain theoretical significance and practical values.Firstly,it demonstrates the linkage effect between the multidimensional analysis of register features and Legitimation Code Theory.This analytical methodology provides a mutual proof method and research paradigm for the empirical study of legitimation codes.Secondly,the thesis discusses the characteristics of health science knowledge building from the principles of Specialization,Semantics and Autonomy,which enriches and thus improves the research depth and scope of LCT at home.Finally,this thesis summarizes five principles and four discourse strategies of health science popularization in short videos,with the purpose of helping new media choose legitimate knowledge-building methods,and providing discourse guidance for building a healthy China.