The Visual Construction Of National Identities From A Perspective Of Visual Grammar The Visual Construction Of National Identities

Nowadays, while many countries around the world continuously compete in hard powerconstruction as they used to, they also attach great importance to soft power construction.National identity, as an important part of soft power, reflects the perception and evaluation ofa nation by the international community. Therefore, an increasing number of countries makeefforts in constructing positive national identities.China, as a rising great power, is inevitably one of the focuses for the world. However,due to the differences in cultural traditions and political system from the western countries,negative aspects of national identities of China, more often than not, are emphasized andamplified by western media. Under such contexts, China actively endeavors to constructpositive identities for itself by various means, among which the National Publicity Film(including Character Chapter and Angle Chapter) represents China’s first attempt of publicityfilm and is a significant step in the history of national public relations advertising for China.Based on Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1996,2006) visual grammar, this thesis analyzes thevisual construction of national identities in the Character Chapter. The analysis reveals that5positive national identities have been constructed through foregrounding of key factors andthe application of such variables as demand, perspective and distance, etc. Specificallyspeaking, China is constructed as1) an open nation through establishing an imaginarypositive interactive relationship between the represented and interactive participants;2) anequal member of the international community since the consistent use of eye-level anglesignifies equal power relation between the represented and interactive participants;3) anup-rising power, which can be illustrated by successful holdings of top-level internationalevents and achievements in advanced high-tech field;4) a peace-loving nation by highlightingthe representation of pigeons and its role as UN peacekeeping force;5) a well-rounded nationby presenting people from various walks of life, which mirror its diversified development.The current research is significant in helping domestic organizations, whether official ornon-official, to produce more appropriate publicity images and conduct effective publicitythat is more in line with western culture.