| The webpage of a university is an important window for people to get a general picture of the university.As English becomes the dominant language in international communication,the English webpage is an essential medium and platform for most universities both in China and abroad.The discourse features and English translation of university webpages have been widely discussed in the existing literature.However,the English About webpages on the universities' official websites,as a main stage of international communication,have been paid little attention to by researchers.Therefore,the present study attempts to examine the features of English About webpages of universities in China and how these features contribute to the discursive construction of the universities' institutional identity,based on the data collected from the official About webpages of 35 “First-class A universities” in China.A detailed analysis of the English About webpages of 35 universities were conducted within the theoretical framework of the Discourse-historical Approach(DHA)proposed by Ruth Wodak(2001)and by adopting the Multimodal Discourse Analysis,especially the Visual Grammar proposed by Kress and van Leeuwen(1996).The following results were arrived at.(1)The About webpage,as a typical multimodal discourse,is composed of texts and pictures.The About webpage can be divided into three types: text-oriented,picture-oriented and graphic-text combination,and most About webpages belong to the type of graphic-text combination.(2)The analysis of texts shows that the discursive strategies of nomination are frequently employed to highlight the uniqueness and excellent academic influence of the universities.Predication highlights the traits,status and future visions of the universities.The discursive strategies of argumentation are used to show the goals,responsibilities and achievements.Perspectivation,including direction and indirect quotation,is often used to show the uniqueness,the national and policy support and the expectations for their future development of the universities.The intensification strategy focuses onshowing the present efforts and future goals of the universities to the browsers through parallel phrases and present progressive tense.(3)The analysis of pictures shows that most pictures on the About webpages are about campus scene.The meaning of pictures is realized by representational meaning,interactive meaning and compositional meaning.The representational meaning is mainly expressed by the pictures of the architectures and natural sceneries,leaders,student life and overseas students.The meaning of interaction is realized by viewers' involvement and interacting with the pictures by adjusting the camera lens' shooting angle and the distance.The composition meaning is mainly reflected in the layout and color matching of the About webpages.(4)The analysis of graphic-text combination shows that the content of texts and pictures are usually complement with each other and closely linked to the information of the university.The general features of 35 universities' About webpages are mainly expressed as: textual part is dominated by information statement,and picture is auxiliary.Two modes work together to construct the institutional identity of “World-class Universities and First-class Disciplines”.This study has both theoretical and practical implications.Theoretically,this study displays in its application of Wodak's Discourse-historical Approach in the construction of institutional identity,thus expanding the use of DHA and providing a tentative framework to the analysis of the multimodal discourse similar to the university About webpages.Practically,this study may be helpful for designing the university About webpages with an appropriate layout of texts and pictures,which can highlight the most unique features of the universities and enhance their positive images. |
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