| In recent years, with the development of modern technology, our world isbecoming more and more diversified and colorful. People around us adopt a multitudenew ways to socialize and communicate. Meaning is realized not only throughlanguage but also through the multiple semiotic resources including static anddynamic ones. Images, as one important communicative mode, are generallyconsidered to be vivid, impressive and persuasive and they have become a necessaryand indispensable part of news reporting in mass media. The past studies on news aremainly confined to the verbal analysis, neglecting the function of other semioticresources. Therefore, this thesis mainly conducts researches in two aspects based onthe theoretical framework of Kress and van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar. One is toexplore how different semiotic elements of images in the reports of Time arecoordinated to construct meanings and achieve visual communication with viewers.The other is to do a comparative analysis to summarize and generalize the typicalmultimodal characteristics of images distributed among different news types.Data in this study will be gathered from paper Time Asia and only includesimages among Political reports and Entertainment reports. The general analyticalresearch method adopted a combined methodology of quantitative&qualitative studytogether with micro-analysis¯o-analysis.After qualitative analysis of15visuals in detail, this paper found that images canbe decoded according to Visual Grammar. From the perspective of representationalstructure, the sample analysis chiefly concentrates on what is represented inConceptual and Narrative visuals. Images are no longer supplementaries or auxiliariesof verbal things and can function as a valid communicative event. The analytic resultof the interactive part shows when a social relationship is established betweeninteractive participants and represented participants, readers’ thoughts can bedominated or influenced by certain hints depicted in news images. For the perspective of compositional meaning, it can be concluded that different spatial distribution givesdifferent importance to the elements depicted in one picture. And image-producerscan present the views they wish to emphasize in various possible compositions underthe proper distribution of different depicted participants.Based on the quantitative and comparative analysis of collected136images, themajor findings include:First, although the amount of Political news is more than Entertainment reports,more images are applied among Entertainment news. Second, the heavy use ofnarrative visuals can accurately and objectively manifest the truthfulness of reports inTime and make the content of the reporting more intuitive, concrete and vivid. Andmore conceptual images are represented in Entertainment reports than Political ones.Third, two kinds of news contain more “offer” images (85.3%;83.6%) than“demands” images (14.6%;16.3%). Reports in Time are mainly depicted as objects ofcontemplation, rather than demand something. Forth, the most frequently chosensocial distance distributed in Political&Entertainment reports is long shot. Fifth, thedifference between the oblique and the frontal angle is the difference betweendetachment and involvement. Most reports take a frontal angle and only a smallpercentage of reports are viewed with power. Sixth, the realization of modality inimages is much more complicated and graded than the realization of modality inlanguage. In one photograph, not every modality markers are expected to appear.There is always an absence of Representation modality marker in some diagrams orstatistics in Time.To sum up, this thesis is intended to enlarge the field of MDA with theframework of Visual Grammar. And also since no one has done a systematicalresearch to explore the comparative multimodal characteristics of different news types,the constructed research procedures and research methods in this thesis could providesome useful insights into multimodal comparative study on news reporting. |
PDF Full Text Request