A Multimodal Discourse Analysis On The Visual Presentation And Communication Strategy Of The Winter Olympics

The spirit of the Winter Olympics is the spiritual wealth jointly created by the vast number of participants in the Beijing Winter Olympics and Paralympics.It contains five parts: "bearing in mind the big picture;being confident and open;rising to the challenges;pursuing excellence;and creating a better future".With its distinct symbolic meaning and historical heritage,it has become a semiotic sign widely seen in various media."About Winter",as a large-scale documentary produced by China Central Television to publicize the Beijing Winter Olympics,presents the preparation process of the Beijing Winter Olympics and the flourishing development of ice and snow sports brought by the Winter Olympics from a multi-dimensional perspective,which is of great significance to the presentation and dissemination of the Winter Olympics spirit.Based on the "visual grammar theory"(1996)of Kress and Van Leeuwen and Multi-modal Discourse Analysis(MDA),this study selects "Around Winter" as the research object to analyze the visual semiotic signs such as image,color,and layout in the film.MDA,case studies,quantitative analysis,etc.,are used to analyze the visual elements and interpret their visual presentation of the connotation of the Winter Olympics spirit,and then to explore how "About Winter" disseminates the spirit of the Winter Olympics,which is of reference value for the development of sports documentaries.This paper can be divided into four parts: the introduction introduces the research background and significance,research design,and research methods;it also reviews the status quo of MDA research and research on sports documentaries at home and abroad,which lays the foundation for the following analysis and demonstration.The first chapter analyzes the visual elements in the film from the three functional meanings of visual grammar theory: representational meaning,interactional meaning,and compositional meaning,and explores the specific composition of visual resources and the connotational meaning of various semiotic signs.The second chapter,which is the main body of this paper,discusses the visual presentation and interpretation of the spirit of the Winter Olympics in the documentary.It interprets the five connotations of the spirit of the Winter Olympics from five perspectives,namely,the shaping of the overall image,the presentation of the equal picture,the outline of the individual story,the description of the professional details,and the expression of the keynote of the current times,and converts the abstract concept of spirit into a concrete lens language.It also uses specific visual examples to explain how "About Winter" builds an emotional connection with the audience through visual modes and presents the spirit of the Winter Olympics.The third chapter elaborates the communication strategy of the Winter Olympics spirit,explores the communication strategy of the film to the Winter Olympics spirit and even the Chinese sports spirit from the three aspects of communication content,target audience,and communication medium,and puts forward suggestions and thoughts for the symbol construction of a sports documentary.There are two findings in this paper: one is the visual presentation of the spirit of the Winter Olympics."About Winter" presents "bearing in mind the big picture" through architectural symbols and human figures;"being confident and open" through a head-up view and "implicit categorization";"rising to the challenges" through the process of movement and individual narratives;"pursuing excellence" through professional characters and close-up shooting angles;and "creating a better future" through national symbols and positive modality.Another one is the communication strategy of the Winter Olympics spirit.The film adopts multiple narrative perspectives,parallel montage techniques,and lens aesthetics to display the contents of urban architecture and characters’ stories,which reflect and spread the Winter Olympics spirit.The film creates a new media symbol in the digital age,realizes cross-cultural communication,and provides the possibility for foreign audiences to find a common cultural space and establish an equal communication system with domestic audiences.The film,with its diversified way of communication,plays a significant role in presenting China’s spirit of the Winter Olympics to the foreign media and strengthening the patriotism of Chinese people in the domestic media.