Multimodal Discourse Analysis On Promotion Videos-A Comparative Study On Videos Of Olympic Bid For Beijing 2008 And 2022

With the great achievements in science and technology,when people want to explain or describe something,they realize they can’t put other non-verbal modes into isolation instead of using verbal language alone.Gradually the dominant position of verbal language has transmitted to that of non-verbal modes including sound,images,gestures and colors.The variance in this aspect has changed people’s way of thinking and their lifestyle.In the 1990s,a new study has emerged called multimodal discourse analysis（MDA）which offers people a new way to analyze discourses.MDA is a study combining different kinds of semiotic modes simultaneously.In the earlier stage,most scholars have focused on static texts analysis such as paintings,movie posters and covers of magazines.Then with the upsurge of multimedia,scholars have transferred their attention to dynamic texts analysis such as movie trailers,advertisements,promo videos which will be mentioned in this thesis.Except these two aspects,comparative study has been mentioned such as comparative study of advertisements of different phones and study of promo videos from different countries about Olympic Games.And relations among different modes have also been investigated especially to the relations between verbal mode and visual mode.However,comparative study of the promo videos from the same country is rare.Up until now,Beijing is the only country which has access to host two Olympic Games both in summer and in winter.There must be some reasons behind its success for winning the bid which could be prosperous economy,clean environment or advanced technology.Also when bidding countries compete for votes,they will prepare promo videos beforehand to let International Olympic Committee（IOC）judge which country gets the final vote.Promo video provides a platform for bidding countries,which epitomizes many aspects of them into one video.Further it is through the promo video that people can acknowledge their countries’ whole images and people’s attitudes to Olympic Games.From the above explanation,promo video,as one element in bidding can be regarded as a vital part in winning the chance for holding Olympic Game.The research content includes two promo videos.One is the promo video of Beijing 2008 Summer Olympic Game,and the other is that of Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Game.The research in this thesis focuses on making a comparative study of two promo videos which is based on Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar including three aspects:representational meaning,interactive meaning and compositional meaning.This research has made contributions to the study of MDA.Theoretically,it proves the effectiveness and practical use in multimodalities and also broadens the research field of MDA.Practically,it offers people a new way to interpret promo videos through comparative way.Also,it can extend to some other subjects such as teaching area which makes it more comprehensive.