| Previous studies on the defense discourse have mainly emphasized the importance of the Defense White Paper,and paid little attention to other types of defense discourse such as the recruiting commercials and military interview programs.Besides,most of these studies have focused on topics including translation strategies and stylistic features rather than multimodal discourse features and image construction issues.Given the fact that the form and target audience of the defense discourse are becoming increasingly diverse in the age of multimedia and globalization,and the libelous declarations including China threat theory and military opacity still remain.It is necessary to study the language characteristics and image construction features of defense discourse from the perspective of multimodal discourse analysis.Therefore,this study chooses 14 recruiting commercials of both China and America(2016-2018)as the research subject,and the visual grammar as the theoretical framework,to discuss the following three questions: 1)What nation,military and soldier images have been constructed by those commercials? 2)What bimodal discourse strategies have been adopted by those recruiting commercials? 3)Is there any ideological disparity in those images and strategies?It is found that Chinese commercials mainly adopt positive strategies including presenting the national spirit and responsibility,the colorful experience and honor of being a soldier to attract young people.Those commercials have constructed a powerful but benign national image,a peacekeeper image of the military and a nation-protector image of the soldier.While the American videos have shaped a national image of the mightiest power,a world protector image of the military and the social elite image of the soldier through negative strategies,such as removing the adverse effect of racial discrimination and the negative image of a warmonger.In addition,the Chinese videos often present simple scenes and monotonous facial expressions,which tends to convey the sense of distance and respect.By contrast,the American commercials prefer to adopt such strategies as direct eye contacting,various scenes and rich expressions to narrow the distance and enhance the interaction between the soldiers and the audience.Besides,taking the recruiting commercials as the research subject and the visual grammar as the theoretical frame to analyze the bimodal discourse features of those selected videos,to some extent,could enrich the research of defense discourse.Furthermore,strategies summarized in this research could provide some insight for domestic commercial-producing department in terms of the material selection and visual elements composition. |
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