| For a growing number of discourse researchers, it has become increasingly evident that in the pursuit of understanding communication means around us, the analysis of language alone is not enough. The fact is that multimodality has always been omnipresent in most of the communicative contexts, which has been ignored for a long time. Changes in the technology of communication, like the advancement of information technology and the popularity of the computer and the Internet use, are forcing this issue to protrude conspicuously and are compelling researchers to reexamine the approach of communicative discourse, since everyday lives have become more pervasively mediated by multimodality. Multimodal discourse analysis entails going beyond language as social semiotic and making use of two or multiple semiotic resources for meaning-making, for example, language, visual images, music, space, and so on. Education weblogs, as one kind of computer-mediated discourse, is undoubtedly not confined to the traditional discourse, which requires researchers to make a deep study on how the meanings are made in a multimodal way.This research attempts to answer how the meanings are made in computer-mediated discourse, like education weblogs, including two issues:1) during the process of meaning-making in education weblogs, how do the bloggers make semiotic choice and then integrate them? 2) from the perspective of the blog readers, what is the most possible reading path for interactive communication?This thesis adopts some main thoughts of functional linguistics (language as a social semiotic and three metafunctions), and relative mature and systematic multimodal discourse theory (visual grammar) as well as some key primary principles as the theoretical foundation for the analysis of meaning-making in education weblogs. The present study explores the meaning-making in education weblogs from the perspectives of bloggers and blog readers respectively in a multimodal way. It, based on 20 pieces of education weblogs collected from two influential websites:Online Education Weblogs (http://blog.eduol.cn); China Education Weblogs (http://www.blog.edu.cn), adopts content analysis as quantitative method, and then utilizes these statistical results to make a qualitative analysis so as to guarantee the research outcomes'credibility.It is found out that the meanings of computer-mediated discourse like education weblogs are made by two sides:bloggers and blog readers together, which indicates the static research on multimodal discourse steps into the dynamic one. The specific results of the research are summarized as follows:1) along with three meanings in multimodal discourse proposed by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006), factors affected mode choice are the property of modes, the theme of the text, the communicative goal and meaning-makers'own interest; 2) relationships of meaning integration between language and image have been worked out:in terms of representative meaning, there are four ways: complement, synonymy, antonomy, collocation; in terms of interactive meaning, attitudinal congruence and attitudinal dissonance; in terms of compositional meaning, foreground and background; 3) a common and flexible reading path is drawn out.This study is of great practical significance. On the one hand, the analysis of meaning-making of multimodal discourse could help us make best use of enormous semiotic modes to produce a piece of discourse and interpret the discourse optimally. On the other hand, the great concern on reading path leads to the increasing awareness of users of computer-mediated discourse when shuttling in a multi-links network, which can improve users'multi-literacy in the face of vast semiotic resources. Specifically, owing to education weblogs as the research subject, the knowledge of how to make meanings expressed and interpreted optimally can promote the communication between educators, teachers or students as well as enhance the efficiency of their communication. Apart from that, this multimodal analysis on education weblogs can deepen and expand the influence of online education. It is of great significance to teachers'teaching and students'learning and school's management. In short, the research on education weblogs from the perspective of multimodal discourse analysis is multi-functional in a practical way.This thesis is composed of six chapters. Chapter One is a general introduction, which briefly introduces the background of this study, the research questions, the data collection and research method, finally the layout of this thesis. Chapter Two firstly reviews some key notions in multimodal discourse analysis and defines the notions employed in this thesis. It is followed with the previous studies on the meaning-making in multimodal discourse from the social semiotic and interactive approaches respectively and then the previous relevant studies on computer-mediated discourse are surveyed. In the light of these reviews, it suggests that meaning-making in multimodal computer-mediated discourse deserves a deep research in a new approach. Chapter Three explicates the theoretical foundations of this thesis. Chapter Four makes a detailed quantitative analysis based on content analysis method, which is beneficial to next chapter's qualitative analysis of meaning-making in education weblogs in a multimodal way. Chapter Five explores the meaning-making in education weblogs negotiated between bloggers and readers in a multimodal discourse approach. It firstly investigates from the perspective of discourse producer (i.e. bloggers), concerning the semiotic mode choice, meaning integration of major semiotic modes. Subsequently, the analysis from the perspective of discourse interpreters (i.e. blog readers) deals with the two accesses to co-make meanings to communicate with bloggers. Chapter Six summarizes the major findings and significance of this thesis and then presents the limitations as well as suggestions for further investigations. |
