A Cognitive Reference Approach To Multimodal Discourse Coherence

As a pervasive language phenomenon, coherence has attracted much attentionof both domestic and overseas scholars in the past few decades. They have madegreat contributions to the analysis of coherence, which has been deeply exploredfrom different perspectives, and various corresponding theories have beenconstructed. However, what they study is mostly the coherence of written text, andthere are few specific studies on the issue of multimodal discourse coherence.The research of multimodal discourse analysis (MDA for short) sprang up inwestern linguistic field during the1990s. The interaction between language andimage has been studied. Scholars have also studied in depth how multimodaldiscourse conveys meaning and information. In recent years, many scholars in Chinabegin to analyze different kinds of multimodal discourse in the framework of visualdiscourse, proposed by Kress and Van Leeuwen in1996. However, all the researchesthey’ve done are concerned with meaning construction, and few research is done todeal with multimodal discourse coherence. Therefore, a more comprehensive workon it is urgently needed. This thesis focuses on TV commercial, which is a typicalmember of multimodal discourse with both visual modal and auditive modal.The study results show that Cognitive Reference Point Model (CRP for short)proposed by Langacker can only help to analyze the simple connection of picture andscene in TVC, but CRP can not highlight the dynamic feature of TVC and isincompetent in analyzing its underlying cognitive coherent mechanism. Therefore,based on CRP, an amended model Cognitive Reference Point+(CRP+) is establishedin this paper and its interpretation power on multimodal discourse coherence isdemonstrated. According to CRP+, it is found that coherent analysis of TVC shouldcome down to each modal involved in it. Elements that involved in a TVC includevisual modal and auditive modal. Elements in visual modal appear in proper sequence along with the plot of TVC. Generally, element that appears earlier isconsidered as the cognitive reference point, which leads to the next element of thisTVC. Meanwhile, there’s also situation that multiple elements constitute a wholecognitive reference point according to different TVC plot. Elements in auditivemodal are mainly used to replenish visual modal. Both visual modal and auditivemodal, which are complementary to each other, contribute to the monolithiccoherence.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One offers a general introduction tosome basic issues concerning the rationale, the objectives, the methodology, datacollection, as well as a general outline of the thesis. Chapter Two presents anoverview of relevant literature on coherence and multimodal discourse. Theachievements and limitations of previous researches are discussed at the end of thischapter. Chapter Three means to provide an overall theoretical basis and put forwardthe amended theoretical framework CRP+. Chapter Four explores the process ofunderstanding TV commercial coherence in the light of CRP+which is put forward inChapter Three to seek its coherent mechanism. Chapter Five is a conclusion of thewhole thesis which summarizes the contributions and points out the limitations of thecurrent research and also gives suggestions for further studies.