A Comparative Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of Chinese And English AIDS Prevention Videos

With the rapid development of multimedia, people tend to use different ways tocommunicate with each other and multimodal discourse has been adopted more and morefrequently to construct meaning and deliver message. Multimodal discourse is known asthose discourses that produce the integrative meaning by means of the interaction of twoor more semiotic modes of communication, such as language, visual images, sound andbody movement etc. Video, as an emerging means of communication with various modes,can effectively express its artistic connotation. Since the1990s, multimodal discourse hasbeen explored by a number of researchers, but most of their studies are concerned withstatic images, such as posters and movie texts. Few focuses on dynamic images---video,let alone a comparative analysis of videos in different languages, and the analysis of AIDSprevention videos has never been conducted.This research is a comparative multimodal discourse analysis of Chinese and EnglishAIDS prevention videos. The author has collected AIDS prevention videos in bothlanguages produced by eight government and non-government organizations ranging from2006to2012. Based on the first systematic model for analyzing multimodal discourse putforward by Kress and van Leeuwen and O’Halloran’s framework of multimodal discourseanalysis of film text, the present author proposes a modified model for analyzing videos.The selected Chinese and English AIDS prevention videos are analyzed and comparedfrom the representational, interactive and compositional meaning to find any differencesbetween them in meaning-making by multimodal discourse.First of all, the present author divide the selected videos into100Chinese videochunks and100English videos chunks according to camera movement, meaning-makingof images and chronological order. Secondly, a quantitative study is conducted from therepresentational, interactive as well as compositional meaning. Lastly, one video is chosenfrom Chinese and English videos respectively to demonstrate the variables and process ofanalysis.After the comparative study, the research findings can be summarized as follows.First of all, in the representational meaning, Chinese videos use more conceptual process than English ones. However, English videos are more likely to adopt narrative process.Then, as for the interactive meaning, Chinese videos focus on offer act, the combination ofclose-up, medium and long shot, oblique perspective, soft and gentle music or withoutbackground music, short but encouraging lines, as well as high modality to construct theinteractive meaning. Besides, the results also show that the use of demand acts increasesgradually in Chinese videos. However, it is found that English videos tend to adoptdemand act, close-up, frontal perspective, long and inspiring lines, grief and solemn musicand medium and low modality. At last, as to the compositional meaning, it is concludedthat Chinese videos are prone to place the key objects or information on the right side ofthe image, and attach great emphasis to use foreground and contrast in tonal value toachieve salience. However, English videos usually put the key objects or information inthe center of the image, and employ bigger size, or foreground to reach salience.The significance of this research is to find out how the differences between Chineseand English AIDS prevention videos are realized through the representational, interactiveand compositional meaning. This research may not only provide a profound meaning toenhance readers’ multimodal discourse literacy, but offer a new perspective to appreciatevideos. Besides, we propose a modified model for multimodal discourse analysis of videos,which may present a great effort to the further study of multimodal discourse analysis.