A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of The Homepage Of The2012London Olympic Games’ Official Website

During the past ten years, the researches of multimodal discourse analysis are gradually becoming moreand more widespread in the academic field. In1996, Kress&Van Leeuwen wrote Reading Images and createdthe theory of Visual Grammar which derived from the systematical functional grammar of Halliday. As a result,,research on multimodal discourse analysis became popular. This study will use the theory of Visual Grammar tomake multimodal discourse analysis on the homepage of the2012London Olympic Games’ official website forthe realization of meanings of website pages. The present study aims to resolve four questions. The first one ishow the representational meaning of the homepage is realized. The second is how the interactive meaning of thehomepage is realized. The third one is how the compositional meaning of the homepage is realized. Fourth, inconclusion, the author intends to demonstrate how these three meanings integrate to prove the2012LondonOlympic Games spirit,“inspire a generation”. Moreover, the author hopes that this study can prove theeffectiveness and advantages of the MDA on website analysis and push forward the more profound developmentof MDA.This thesis has6chapters altogether. Chapter one makes a general introduction about the researchbackground, research purpose and research significance one by one. Chapter one also gives some definitionsabout modalities and multimodalities as well as the organization of the thesis. Chapter two presents a literaturereview of the studies on MDA and the studies of MDA on websites. In the summary of Chapter two, the authoralso lists the differences between this study and previous relevant studies. Chapter three displays the completetheoretical framework of this research paper in concrete way, which is Kress&Van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar.In chapter four, the methodology of the study is cited in specific way. Chapter five, the crucial part of the study,the data analysis and discussion are carried out. Lastly, in chapter six, the author answers all four researchquestions one by one, draws conclusion on the whole study, points out the limitations of the research and looksforward to the better studies of MDA on websites pages in the future.To sum up, according to the data analysis and results discussion, this study draws the followingconclusions:(1) The representational meaning of the homepage of the2012London Olympic Games’ official website isgenerally realized by conceptual images which occupy66%of all image parts. They mainly offer concepts,notions, logos and other objective information about the2012Olympic Games to the viewers. (2) The interactive meaning of the website’s homepage is realized most by offer contact (76%), long shotsocial distance (76%), objectivity-knowledge orientation (50%) and high modality (47%). That is to say, mostimage parts of this homepage offer information, goods and services to viewers, present impersonal long distancein order to show the whole scenes of reports, give objective relevant knowledge and information of the OlympicGames and use brilliant colors to attract viewers and increase the interaction.(3) The compositional meaning of the homepage of the website is realized in the kind of top and downimages parts (32%), high salience (68%) and framing of contrast (27%). Of the high salience, color (27%), focus(23%) and size (18%) are the top three elements which increase higher salience. Therefore, the homepagefrequently uses top and down style to show the difference between the ideal and the real, uses the brilliant colors,heavier elements to show the focus and different kinds of contrast to show the different frames.(4) The integrated meaning of the website can be realized in this way: It offers valuable, objective concepts,information and services with brilliant high modality and high salience. Now we can prove that the slogan of the2012London Olympic Games,“Inspire a generation”, can be realized by the meanings of the homepage of theofficial website. Because this website tends to use valuable and significant conceptual image as part of itsinformation, panoramic view, high modality, brilliant colors, high salience and different contrasts in order toattract viewers offers and promotes more remarkable and prominent information of the spirit of this OlympicGames to the world. It is the quintessential representation of this2012London Olympic Games’ spirit. That is tosay, this official website’s homepage is a great window on the London Olympic Games’ spirit, which takesadvantage of conceptual information as well as colorful page views to encourage and inspire a generation like us,our children, and our parents.