Textbook Discourse: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis

Due to its significant role in education and cultural transmission,pedagogical discourse has been an important subject for Systemic Functional linguists.Textbook is one of the major categories of pedagogical discourse.As textbook has undergone tremendous changes in both its forms and functions,it is extremely significant to conduct progressive studies on textbook discourse.Multimodal discourse analysis(hereafter MDA) is a new approach to discourse analysis based on the semiotic theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics(hereafter SFL).It investigates the meaning-making system of the combination of two or more than two semiotic systems within a text.Kress & van Leeuwen's(1996) Visual Grammar is the landmark in MDA.Since 1996,many great strides have been made in this area both theoretically and practically.Rather than a monomodal discourse methodology which treats textbook discourse as purely verbal without any other semiotics in producing meaning,MDA acknowledges the fact that various semiotic systems co-create meaning in a text.However,few comparative studies have been made on the relations between textbook discourse and other genres and the distinctions among textbook discourses of different disciplines at different learning levels(杨信彰,2007:19).Therefore,the aim of the present research is to adopt the approach of MDA to explore multimodality in textbook discourse and propose a richer account of evaluations by integrating visual and verbal modes in meaning-making mechanism.Based on a tentative comparative analysis of eight paper textbooks of different subjects at junior middle school and university levels,the present study is conducted at two stages,a multimodal content analysis(hereafter MCA) followed by a multimodal discourse analysis.The results of MCA and MDA show that great distinctions exist in multimodality among textbook discourses of different subjects at different learning levels.There are two possible reasons for these differences.The first one lies in the different levels of cognitive abilities middle school students and university students have developed in learning. The second is that the major function of paper textbooks is to transmit knowledge and information,rather than mainly establishing interpersonal relationships with students or constructing cohesion in textbooks.The results of the present study are significant for both the development of multiliteracies and textbook design.