Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis Of Video Advertisements

With the increasing influence of the mass media, various kinds of advertisements spread to each field of social lives. On the one hand, advertisement viewers have to decode multimodal symbols before they get the ads messages; on the other hand, advertisement producers capitalize on multimodal semiotic resources to construct producer-audience relationship and then realize the objectivity of persuasion and manipulation. Multimodal critical discourse analysis(MCDA) mainly addresses two major challenges, accounting for multimodal phenomena constructed through multimodal symbolic resources, and relating high-level critical insights on the social motivations of discourse with their realizations in the low-level expressive phenomena. The video advertisement is a kind of dynamic advertising form evolving from the print advertisements. Therefore, analyzing video advertising discourse from MCDA approach is contributive to expanding the perspective of advertisement studies, and increasing the complexity of analysis material of MCDA, from static material to dynamic one.The present study takes plastic surgery advertisements as the case study. The worldwide popularity of plastic surgery is attributed to the demand of customers, and more to the marketing. This study investigates the video plastic surgery advertising discourse in terms of MCDA to explore how advertisers use multimodal symbolic resources as a means to exercise control over customers, which is of great significance for further revealing the fact advertisers achieve their purpose of persuading customers, even influencing and changing their views about plastic surgery. In order to achieve the objectives mentioned above, this research aims to answer three research questions in detail:1) What are the specific features of each mode in the video plastic surgeryadvertisements?2) How do modes interact with each other to convey coherent multimodalmeanings in the video plastic surgery advertisements?3) How does the multimodal plastic surgery advertising discourse reflect and enactparticular ideology and social practice, and then realize the objectivity ofpersuading customers, even changing their views about plastic surgery?In order to improve the feasibility and validity of this research, the present study tailors an integrated framework for multimodal critical discourse analysis, providing guidance to actual analysis of three-dimensional discourse. It also uses corpus retrieval tool Ant Conc, video annotation software ELAN and speech analysis software Praat to provide scientific basis and technical support for the analysis process. The major findings of this research are presented as follows:(1) Verbal mode, visual mode and audio mode in the video plastic surgery advertisements demonstrate different kinds of features respectively. In terms of verbal mode, striking linguistic devices of plastic surgery advertising texts include the choice of pronouns(widely use of the second-person pronoun, second person possessive pronoun and first-person pronoun), adjective-noun collocations, types of sentences(imperatives and questions), and the choice of modal auxiliaries. Through selective use of pronouns, types of sentences and modal auxiliaries, advertisers encourage customers to take some actions, and establish relatively close relationship with them. Via adjective-noun collocations, advertisers stimulate customers’ desire to and positive feelings with the advertised products, as well as worries to their own problems. In terms of visual mode, advertisers capitalize on visual elements to create professional images of doctors, and convey confident feelings of customers who have had successful plastic surgery experience and negative emotions of those who have not received plastic surgery. Besides, advertisers purposefully establish two different kinds of relationships, i.e. doctor-viewer relation and customer/patient-viewer relation, so as to make viewers accept information conveyed from advertisements in an easier way. On the whole, advertisers are intended to establish an equal relation with the viewers. In terms of audio mode, advertisers mainly adopt strategies of highlighting the key information(e.g. agency name, procedures and results of plastic surgery), positive information(e.g. surgery effect and service level), warning information(e.g. the dangers of not receiving plastic surgery), as well as encouraging words(taking actions).(2) Different modes of video plastic surgery advertisements interact with each other to construct coherent multimodal discourse in the meanings. The ideational multimodal meanings between verbal/audio mode and visual mode are interacted through intersemiotic sense relations of repetition, synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, meronymy, and collocation. The interpersonal multimodal meanings between verbal/audio mode and visual mode are interacted through intersemiotic relations of reinforcement of address and attitudinal congruence. The textual multimodal meanings between visual mode and audio/verbal mode are interacted through reinforcement of salience and complement of salience.(3) In order to realize the objectivity of persuading customers, even changing their views about plastic surgery, verbal mode and visual mode work together to recontextualize the plastic surgery, including four recontextual processes, namely substitution(simplifying the complex process of plastic surgery), addition(adding hospital environment, good atmosphere, and something related with plastic surgery), deletion(deleting specific surgery process, postoperative recovery process, and failure cases), and evaluation(adding positive comments).Besides, video plastic surgery advertisers convey information like what “beauty” is, safety and convenience of having plastic surgery, doctors being professional and experienced, as well as having plastic surgery being synonymous with having a better life via multimodal symbolic resources. Meanwhile, advertisers adopt various advertising strategies, such as invoking dissatisfaction, unreal representation, setting up the authority, encouraging words and puffery. In addition, the production and dissemination of multimodal plastic surgery advertising discourse and its social context can be regarded as a process of action and reaction. On the one hand, multimodal advertising discourse can reflect social context and some certain mainstream ideology. The representation of beauty in the multimodal plastic surgery advertising discourse is under the influence of the mainstream ideology of beauty, which also reflects a general attitude of current society, modern people, especially women, to more specific, their commitment to conforming to the mainstream standard of beauty. On the other hand, the dissemination of multimodal plastic surgery advertising discourse strengthens the mainstream understanding of beauty and approval of having plastic surgery.As to the research findings mentioned above, theoretically, they will further develop the analytical framework of MCDA, and prove its feasibility and effectiveness, which could provide a reference to related researches in the future. Practically, systematic exploration of the interaction between language and other symbol systems contributes to public understanding on multimodal discourse and improving the multiliteracy and appreciation ability of the public. Meanwhile, it helps cultivate critical awareness of ads audiences by uncovering ideologies and power relations underlying in the multimodal advertising discourse.