A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of The Economist Figure Covers

Based mainly on Kress & van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar (1996) and Halliday’s three metafunctions (1985), this study attempts to employ a qualitative and quantitative multimodal discourse analysis of figure covers of The Economist in 2014 with the purpose of identifying how visual and verbal semiotics create meaning. In this paper, front covers with figure images in The Economist are studied as a distinct multimodal genre. They incite viewers to buy the magazine not only by the temptation of the cover story but also by the attraction of the visual image itself. Attention has been paid mainly to the meaning construction of visual modes through three aspects within the framework of Visual Grammar, namely, representative meaning, interactive meaning and compositional meaning. Specifically, the following research questions are addressed:(1) What meanings do multimodal discourses of The Economist figure covers have from the perspective of Visual Grammar? How do multimodal discourses of The Economist figure covers realize meanings?(2) What are the ideologies hidden under The Economist figure covers?Based on data analysis, the main findings are as follows:The Economist figure covers realize three meanings from the perspective of Visual Grammar, namely, representational meaning, interactive meaning and compositional meaning. (1) From the perspective of representational meaning, vectors in narrative processes can be formed by eyelines or other oblique lines in figure covers; besides, important persons such as leaders of a country or an organization who are full of symbolic meanings are chosen with high frequency as cover figures. (2) From the angle of interactive meaning, a considerable number of "offer" have been detected. Medium long shot and fontal angle occur with high frequency which reflects the image producer’s intention of establishing close social distance and creating familiarity. (3) With regard to compositional meaning, the placement of top and bottom is seen with high frequency which conveys the information "Ideal up, Real down". Moreover, salience and framing are used to grasp viewer’s attention and show power relations. Apart from realizing the three meanings, figure covers also reflect the magazine’s ideologies. In a word, the present study, taking The Economist figure covers as its data, testifies that Visual Grammar is forceful to multimodal discourse analysis.The present study has theoretical and practical significances. On the one hand, by exploring the realization of three meanings in the figure covers, the present study takes figure cover as a multimodal genre which enriches the research dimension of multimodal discourse analysis in magazine covers and breaks the limitation of the traditional unitary research data for magazine covers; On the other hand, to some degree, the present study improves viewers’ consciousness towards magazine covers, especially figure covers and elevates their appreciation ability for figure covers.