Multimodal Analysis Of Representative Military History Special Report Homepages In DoD And Star And Stripes Websites

Systemic functional linguistics is the study of the relationship between language and its functions in social settings.It has conducted a thorough and detailed analysis of history discourse,and drawn the typology and topology of history genres.James Martin and Karl Maton,the representative scholars of systematic functional linguistics and sociology of knowledge respectively,work with each other to explore the way language resources construe historical knowledge.Besides language,images and audios are also becoming the resources to construe history meaning in the new media era.But current multimodal genre analysis is focusing on news,comics and shopping websites and the text-image relationship among them.The multimodal history discourse is rarely touched upon despite the abundance of history discourse analysis.The U.S.military news agency and Department of Defense design history columns in their websites and promote history special reports annually,employing a variety of text-image combination patterns to construct military discourse.The systemic analysis of these history special report homepages will explore the understanding of history genre and reveal the history knowledge building pattern through multimodal history discourse.The four main research questions are:1)What are the history value parameters constructed in U.S.military history special report homepages?2)What are the multimodal history genres and multimodal macro genres realized in the history special report homepages?3)How to show the history-value knowledge building patterns among these different multimodal military history special report homepage macro genres?4)What is the intersemiotic relationship established between images and texts used in macro-generic multimodal webpages in the process of knowledge building?Based on systemic functional linguistics(SFL)and sociology of knowledge,genre theory,multimodality theory and legitimation code theory are combined to form the theoretical framework.One theoretical dimension of systemic functional linguistics is stratification.After the history value parameters are identified,the multimodal genre and the relationship among the multimodal genres within the multimodal macro genre realized in the history special report homepages are described in detail above the stratification of discourse semantics.At the lexical grammatical stratification,the specific semiotic resources of image and language that realize history value parameters are identified.And the patterns of language-image mutual construction of history values within different multimodal generic history discourses are identified and compared.This thesis selected 4 types of history special report series from the websites of U.S.military news agency Stars and Stripes and Department of Defense.The fields are history figures,war history reviews,memorial for the fallen in the war and history event commemoration.Through close reading,the content choices and design evolution of these four history special report series are described and compared,which lay the basics for the description of multimodal genres and multimodal macro genres.The findings in this thesis are classified into four aspects:1)the multimodal genres on the U.S.military websites are described which enriches the understanding of the text-image relationship.The dynamic relationship between text and image presents diversified multimodal genres.In the image-dominating multimodal genres,verbal text doesn’t serve as stage.Instead,they only provide explanation or elaboration for the participants in the image.For example,visual history narrative,visual observation and visual narrative genre are the typical image-dominating multimodal genres.The genres in which text and image play equal are diversified.In general,images and text occupy similar-size adjacent spaces,and each symbolic resource serves as an independent stage in the multimodal genre.Image size,location in web pages,text content and font typesetting are important factors in determining multimodal genres.Specific location of the webpages prefers specific configuration of semiotic resources.2)The multimodal macro genre structures realized by these four military history special report homepages are compared based on the modified GeM model.On the one hand,it is found that the selected four military history special report homepages prefer different component multimodal genres to form macro multimodal genres.On the other hand,logical semantics and visual grammar is applied to determine the combination pattern of the various multimodal genres with macro multimodal genres,and the agnation among the four described macro genres realized in these four selected homepages is described.3)Based on the designed 9-scale semantic density and gravity coding device,semiotic resources and the way to realize history values in the four special report homepages are identified.From the perspective of history value,knowledge value is realized mainly through specialized vocabulary and conceptual representative images.Ethical value is realized mainly through lexical evaluative resources and iconization in the conceptual representation.Explaining/reasoning value is mainly realized through linguistic casual phrases or propositions.Time value is realized through the time frame which is built through linguistic prepositions or conjunctions indicating time or through the change of color pattern or background in the image.From the perspective of symbol resources,language resources and image resources have their own features.For example,the four series of homepages tend to select specialized terms or names unique in a specific history period to realize knowledge value.These terms or names construct historical facts or events as participants,goals or environment in the material process.As to image resources,images of conceptual representations,including conjoined exhaustive structures,dimensional and quantitative topography and spatio-temporal analytical structures,are the main image types to realize knowledge value.Conjoined exhaustive structures connect facts to their unique attributes,interpret facts,and present the full contents to the reader.dimensional and quantitative topography and spatio-temporal analytical structures use the number of participants or the frequency of occurrence to convey the facts relevant to the participants in the graph.Images of conceptual representations,such as charts which show the merits of accuracy and quantification,are power images realizing knowledge value.4)The 9-scale translation device is applied to analyze the four types of U.S.military history report homepages and show their respective characteristics of history value knowledge building pattern.This translation device has Symbolization on the top with the highest semantic density and least semantic gravity,and Personal recount on the bottom with the least semantic density and highest semantic gravity.In between,from top to the bottom are Fact,Description,Appreciation,Recount,Statement,Recognition,and Appeal.As to the text-image interaction,the discovery is two-fold.The first is that when the special report homepage intends to convince the reader with ethical value,the text and picture resources often interact in high frequency,and the knowledge building is realized through resources of diversified degrees of semantic density and semantic gravity.The second is that when the primary purpose is to provide information,the semantic gravity and density of the semiotic resources will move up to the top of the semantic wave,and the semantic resources with semantic density and semantic gravity scales below the 5th scale in the translation device are rare.The frequency of interaction between text and pictorial resources is significantly reduced.As to the semantic range preference within the 9-scale translation device,different types of homepages differ.Those homepages that focus on promoting moral and ethical values,such as Heroes,prefer semantic range between Personal recount and Appreciation.Those telling historical facts or reflection,like Vietnam at 50,are more inclined to distribute resources within the semantic range between Recognition and Fact.Homepages that focus on promoting historical knowledge and national pride,such as Anniversary of D-Day and the Invasion of Normandy,prefer the semantic range between Recognition and Fact.The homepages which focus on documenting official actions and promoting collective values such as Memorial’s Day,prefer the semantic range between Recount and Symbolization.The significance of this thesis is three-fold.In the theoretical aspect,the applied comprehensive analytical framework integrates genre theory within the GeM model,which is not only capable of describing the multimodal special report homepage,but also describing the relationship between multimodal macro genre and multimodal genres within.This analytical framework can also be applied to other multimodal homepages on the internet.In the analytical method aspect,the proposed 9-scale coding device provides a handy tool to conduct multimodal discourse analysis.It can not only facilitate the description of mono-modal semiotic resource configuration pattern in knowledge building,but also help to show the interactive pattern of multi semiotic resources in the process of knowledge building.As to its application in practice,this paper studies the history value connotation of the U.S.military and the characteristics of its value construction.This conforms to the needs of our army’s advanced military culture construction,helps our army to tell the story of Chinese army well,and has practical reference value and significance for the new media,website and ideological construction of our army.There are also limitations in this thesis.One is the single-disciplinary linguistics perspective.If other disciplinary perspectives like historiography are incorporated in the study,the depth and breadth of current research on the construction of historical value knowledge will be greatly expanded.Second is the data of the study which are mainly static with limited numbers.As a long tail collector,web pages mainly use their dynamic updating frequency and interactivity to meet the individual needs of different users.Future research needs to include these features in the scope of research to understand the value construction pattern and effects of webpage multi-modal discourse.In addition,the appliability of this comprehensive analytical framework to other multimodal discourse other than special report homepages is waiting to be explored.