On The Identity Construction Of Hangzhou City From The Perspective Of Multimodal Semiotics

The beauty of Hangzhou has been recorded since ancient times.After China’s reform and opening up,the Hangzhou Municipal Government proposed a series of city identities for Hangzhou,such as “Paradise Silicon Valley”,“City of Love”,“China Tea Capital”,and “City of Quality”.In recent years,as part of the “13th Five-Year Plan”,the Hangzhou Municipal Government proposed to develop Hangzhou into a city with a rich cultural flavor.Activities such as hosting the G20 Summit and the 19 th Asian Games have further enhanced Hangzhou’s popularity.As a result,Hangzhou is gradually moving towards becoming an internationalized “City of Culture and Humanity” through its great economic strength and youthful vitality.Against this social and cultural backdrop,the current thesis focuses on the story of “Liang Zhu”,which takes place in Hangzhou,the “Becoming Butterfly” melody in the violin concerto The Butterfly Lovers,and the lyrics related to the story in the Chinese folk song The Butterfly Lovers.It discusses the role of these components in the construction of city identity in Hangzhou from the perspective of multimodal social semiotics,with the ultimate goal of understanding how music discourse participates in social practice.In this thesis,both lyrics and melody are regarded both as social modes and as a modality of music discourse.The main aim of this thesis is to answer the following questions.How does the folk song The Butterfly Lovers convey meaning through its lyrics? What kind of “music act” is expressed in the “Becoming Butterfly” part of the violin concerto The Butterfly Lovers? Finally,what roles do these components play in Hangzhou’s city identity construction?The main methods of research used in this thesis are a literature review,investigation,the case study approach and comparative analysis.First,the thesis uses a literature review to explore previous studies of music discourse and city identity both at home,in China,and abroad.The next step is the use of an investigative method to assess the progress of Hangzhou’s development by visiting Hangzhou Museum and Zhejiang Provincial Museum.Building on the findings of these first steps,through case study analysis,it analyzes the activity schema of the lyrics in the folk song The Butterfly Lovers and the language selection and melody of the “Becoming Butterfly” part of The Butterfly Lovers to identify the “music acts” expressed through multimodal modes such as lyrics and melody.Finally,through comparing similar cities across the world,such as the Austrian “city of music”,Salzburg,and the historical city of Lucerne in Switzerland,the thesis analyzes the roles played by music discourse in the construction of Hangzhou’s city identity.The study finds that the activity schema of the lyrics in the Chinese folk song The Butterfly Lovers reflects the background and theme of the song,and that the language selection reflects the resistance of the protagonists,Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai,to the feudal social system and the persistent desire for freedom and true love.The melody in the “Becoming Butterfly” part of the violin concerto The Butterfly Lovers embodies the long-held true love of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai.The lyrics and melody complement each other,and together they form an impression of Hangzhou’s city identity as charming and harmonious,scholarly and humanistic.