A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of The Documentary Together Against COVID-19

After the emergence of COVID-19,the media productions that related to the epidemic emerged one after another.Multimodal discourse analysis,as a new branch of discourse analysis,has been an important theory for studying multimedia discourse.During the outbreak of COVID-19,China has been misunderstood by part of the international community.Some western media and spokesmen confused the truth and blamed China for the epidemic.Therefore,it is particularly important for China’s foreign media to show the world a true and positive image of China by presenting the media productions like documentaries.The purpose of the thesis is to explore the image presented by documentaries and the construction mode of the image.Based on the visual grammar proposed by Kress and van Leeuwen,and the systemic functional grammar proposed by Halliday,this study takes the documentary Together Against COVID-19 produced by CGTN as the research corpus.The documentary is divided into six episodes.All the verbal text and pictures in the six episodes are chosen as the corpus.The images that the documentary mainly presented are divided into two layers: the shots that include the medical staff and the shots including all the national representatives.The research adopts the methods of literary analysis,quantitative and qualitative analysis,makes quantitative statistics on all the verbal text in these two levels on their transitivity,mood structures,and modality according to systemic functional grammar,intercepts,and samples the pictures with research significance randomly,and then makes qualitative analysis on pictures.After analyzing the text and picture respectively,the combination of text and picture is analyzed by randomly intercepting the shots.This thesis draws a conclusion: First,the documentary has presented a group image of Chinese medical staff who are scientific and professional in prevention and treatment,dedicated to occupation,and always put life first.It also presented a harmonious and friendly doctor-patient relationship and a united medical group with mutual help.Second,it shows the image of a socialist country with solemn dignity and centralized leadership;It shows the image of the national leader who focuses on the people,cares for the people,and treats prevention and control work personally;It shows the image of China upholding the value of a Community of Shared Future for Mankind.The two modalities can play a role in the collaborative construction of meaning,and the image construction is consistent with the theme presented in the white papers.In addition,the documentary also presents the emotional state of the masses during the epidemic in various ways and achieved the purpose of conveying encouraging feelings and shaping a positive national image.Through the research on the multimodal discourse of the documentary Together Against COVID-19,the thesis not only expands the research in the field of multimodal discourse analysis,but also contributes to the research on the mode of China’s foreign discourse construction,and provides enlightenment and experience for the production of documentaries in the field of media.