A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of The Conversational Discourse In Go For It

In recent years,multimodal discourse analysis has become more and more popular.Kress&van Leeuwen's first use of "visual grammar" to analyze images in 1996 marks its beginning,and Royce's creation of the notion "intersemiotic complementarity" in 2007 is the development of the theory.Since then numerous researches on textbooks have been done from the perspective of Multimodal Discourse Analysis.The thesis makes a multimodal discourse analysis of the conversational discourse in Go for It,a junior high school English textbook,by applying theories of visual grammar and intersemiotic complementarity in the hope of answering the following questions:1)Do the images in Go for It realize the visual grammar?What are their main features of the images under visual grammar?How do they construct representational,interactive and compositional meanings?2)Do the language and images in Go.for It realize the intersemiotic complementarity?What are their main features?Based on the content analysis of images and multimodal discourse analysis in the conversational discourse in Go for It,the thesis draws the following conclusions:1.Images in the conversational discourse in Go for It realize the purpose of making meaning under visual grammar.They have the following features:1)Representational meta-function is usually used to express how events or activities take place.In the conversational discourse,narrative representation is adopted as the main way to realize it.The narrative representation is mainly characterized by the actional process and reactional process.In actional process,the vector is formed by the action emanated by the represented participants while in reactional process,the viewers can mobilize related information through the vector that the represented participant emanates.2)When realizing interactive meta-functions,the books mainly adopt "contact"and "social distance" through which a specific type of relationship is established between the viewer and the represented participant.In terms of "contacting",they mainly adopt "offer" and by this means images can provide related information much better.For "social distance",the books mainly adopt "intimate" distance through which the viewers can be involved in the represented world,and it can reach the aim of providing information.3)Adoption of "new" and "ideal" information value and salience of "margin"place are the main features of compositional meta-function of the images in the conversational discourse in Go for It.Usually,there are clear lines between the images and the language,so clear lines are used in framing devices so that the distinct separation of language and image is made.2.Language and images in the conversational discourse in Go for It almost realize the semantic intersemiotic complementarity by means of "repetition" and"synonymy".Connections are made between language and images through occurrence of repetition and synonymous elements,and they co-construe meaning.Besides,the semantic intersemiotic complementarity is sometimes realized by means of collocation,hyponymy and meronymy which are the attributes.The present research may provide the following implications for the designing of images in the junior high school English textbooks:first,the designing of images should adapt to the junior high school students,cognitive ability.Second,types of images should be determined by the main function of textbooks.There should be conceptual images in textbooks as their chief function is to transfer knowledge with the "offer" interactive to co-work with language.Third,designing of images should well co-operate with language so that the images can well perform the function of construing meaning.These are also the successful experience of image setting in the conversational discourse in Go For It.