A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of New Senior English Book For China

Influenced by the dramatic development of multimedia technology, meaning expression not only depends on verbal mode but on the combination of word, image, color, sound and visual effects, etc. Take the textbook as an example. As a kind of pedagogical discourse, its multimodal features have become more and more prominent: printed words are no longer the main resource of conveying knowledge, and a large number of pictures, tables and charts, and diagrams participate in and gradually play more and more important roles in constructing meanings. What's more, varieties of colors and different fonts and font sizes are widely applied in its typography. There is no doubt that all these modalities and semiotic resources can facilitate the comprehensive and effective expression of the teaching contents. Therefore, in the process of using a textbook, whether teacher and student have in-depth understanding of its multimodal features, whether they can effectively identify the role each modality plays in meaning construction and whether they can make use of the involved semiotic resources to improve their reading and learning ability are quite essential. Especially under the influence of the new curriculum reform, efficient classroom learning requires students to have a strong ability of learning autonomy and multi-literacy. So, it is necessary to make a multimodal analysis of current senior English textbooks.Based on the above concern, this paper takes New Senior English Book for China (NSEBC), Student s'Book One to Five published by People's Education Press in 2007 as the main research materials. The analytical frameworks of Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar, Kress and van Leeuwen's Visual Grammar, and Martine and Salway's Image-Text Relations are used to make a comprehensive understanding of the multimodal features of the books and to analyze how different modalities cooperate to construct the three meta-functional meanings and their relations in meaning construction. The study results show that text and image of this series of English textbooks are closely related to each other in constructing the three meta-functional meanings, together with a reasonable layout, harmonious colors, various images and high modality. The images realize more narrative representational meaning than conceptual representational meaning, and most images realize interactive meaning by demanding and offering information and presenting equal power relations with viewers. Of them, photos and illustrations mostly provide information, while tables and charts mostly demand information. Especially those tables which leave space for students to fill in by summarizing or giving answers can stimulate students' enthusiasm. However, there are still problems. For example, some pictures are quite small in size, low in modality and not clear enough; and some do not fully reflect or are not closely related to the teaching contents. As to image-text relation, the five textbooks present more unequal status relation, namely, images mostly subordinate to the text. Of logico-semantic relation, elaboration, extension, and enhancement occupy the most. And of elaboration, exposition is mostly used to make the meaning of the text more concrete and direct. There is far more text exemplification than image exemplification, which also verifies the dominant role of the text in the books. In addition, pictorial illustration and image-text relations in different teaching plates show different features. For example, there are more photos and pictures in Warming Up, Pre-reading and Reading than those in Grammar and Comprehending, while the distribution of tables are just on the contrary. Exposition is mostly applied in Warming Up, and extension is mostly applied in Reading part, etc.By analyzing the semiotic resources and image-text relations of NSEBC in constructing meanings, the present study aims to provide guidance for teachers and students to fully understand and effectively use the multimodal resources in the textbooks. The research results also provide enlightenment for teachers, students as well as textbook compilers. For teachers and students, multimodal consciousness and multi-literacy should be cultivated and improved in teaching and learning. For textbook compilers, a series of high-quality English textbooks should be compiled by making good use of various semiotic resources and modalities, etc.