| Before 1990 s, meaning interpretation and construction mainly lied in language research.However, with the rapid development of new technology and multimedia, teaching has realized the shift from blackboard to screen and from static text to dynamic text. The diversification of text makes scholars not only pay attention to language but also be more concerned with the functions of other modes in communication and meaning construction,such as image, sound, smell, action etc. To adapt above shifts and satisfy the new needs of meaning making, multimodal discourse analysis(MDA) emerges. It studies how two kinds or more than two kinds of symbolic resources(language, space, image, tools etc.) complete the construction of meaning and interaction. According to the studies of recent years, most of them are associated with theoretical research and its applied studies appear quickly and constantly. And among these studies, dynamic multimodal discourse(MD) gradually has become a new hot spot that mostly focuses on the studies of film discourse and entertainment program at present and barely studies online open courses(OOCs) which appears as a new advanced educational way and becomes more and more popular in net era. Therefore, this thesis selects three most popular OOCs Happiness, Death and Justice as the concrete objects of this study, which is based on the study of Wei Xueen in 2012. The selected 5 videos are all OOCs of American universities and the selection is at random in accordance with the ratio of2:2:1. Then based on the Netease rank in the early of 2015, this study also randomly selects 2videos of domestic OOCs to conduct comparative study, respectively from Wang Yangming’s philosophy of mind and The origin of accounting.The main purposes of this study are to explore the use and configuration of various modes and their respective main functions, to explore the interaction and synergy of modes and modal relations, and by comparing American OOCs with domestic OOCs, to find out their similarities and differences. And its significance contains two aspects. Theoretically, the self-established framework of OOCs from MDA perspective is set up, which refers to many scholars’ studies in this field, such as Zhang Delu, Cope, Halliday etc. and provides theoretical references for similar research. Besides, this study expands the applied scope of MDA and deepens learners’ understanding of different modes and modal relations. Practically,this study offers guidance for online learning and reinforces the use of newly-emerged massive online open courses and micro classes. In addition, the research is able to offer references for the development of the domestic OOCs. According to the above purposes and significance, three research questions are put forward: 1) How do various modes configure and what are their main functions? 2) How do those modes achieve interaction and synergy and in this process what kind of relationship do they form? 3) Compared with the Chinese OOCs, what are the characteristics of American OOCs and what are the similarities and differences between these two kinds of OOCs?According to the research questions, this study tentatively establishes an integrated framework of OOC from MDA perspective by referring to Hallidy’s systemic functional linguistics(SFL), Zhang Delu’s integrated framework of MDA and Cope & Kalantzis’ six design factors of meaning construction as the theoretical basis. As to research methods, this study combines qualitative and statistical description. The qualitative analysis is made through definition, explanation, description, and induction etc.. And the statistical is made through questionnaire and the annotation of seven videos by the software ELAN which is used to collect and analyze data. The major findings are as follows: firstly, the use of modes in American OOCs are mainly actional mode, auditory mode and visual mode. The frequency of each mode is very high and there are apparent differences in terms of using proportion and modal distribution. Then different modes chiefly achieve certain prominent function. The modal synergy among various modes is significant and in the interactive process, these modes form complementary and non-complementary relationship. Finally, by comparison, there are some similarities in the modal categories between American OOCs and domestic OOCs, but the differences of modal proportion and balance are large. Furthermore, as to the modal configuration and teaching methods, American OOCs show more advantages than those of domestic OOCs. |
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