Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of The Meaning Constructions In The High-quality Videos Of Micro-course Contest Of Foreign Languages

Discourse,as human communication behavior,has the features of multimodality.Multimodal discourse refers to communication through multiple perceptual channels and with various semiotic resources such as words,sounds,images,colors,gestures,actions,etc.Micro-course has rich and abundant semiotic resources,which is a typical resource for multimodal discourse analysis.Nowadays,micro-course has become a new and popular learning resource with their short and flexible forms,prominent themes,simplicity in use and diverse resources.This thesis takes the six first-prize micro-course videos in the Fifth Micro-course Contest of Foreign Language as the research corpus and attempts to find out the distribution features of multimodal resources and the meaning constructions in the micro-courses.In this way,the thesis will provide some pedagogical implications for the multimodal instructional design of micro-courses.This research is based on systemic functional linguistics,Kress & Van Leeuween‘s visual grammar and Zhang Delu‘s synthetic theoretical framework of multimodal discourse analysis.In this research,the six first-prize micro-course videos are annotated tier by tier in the software ELAN.And three research questions are addressed in this study:(1)What are the distribution features of different semiotic resources in the micro-courses?(2)What are the functions of some key modes in conveying teaching information?(3)How are representational meaning,interpersonal meaning,and compositional meanings achieved by modality synergy?The study found that micro-course of foreign language are full of multimodal resources,including images,text,embedded video,voice,gestures,postures,shots,prosody,expressions,music,etc.(1)In the micro-course videos,visual modalities and verbal modalities occupy a large proportion,which are presented by PPT courseware and prosody respectively.(2)In PPT courseware,visual images and image & text modes appear frequently.(3)With respect to intonation,rising-falling tone and falling tone account for a large proportion,followed by rising-falling tone and rising tone.Falling tone is a common tone teacher uses when they give a statement or explaining the knowledge point.Rising-falling tone makes the teacher‘s voice more rhythmic and creates a pleasant and enjoyable learning atmosphere.(4)What‘s more,teachers adopt more deictic gestures and beat in micro-courses.In oral course,deictic gestures can draw students‘ attention,prompt knowledge points and arouse students‘ desire for oral expression.Beat plays an auxiliary role in the micro-course videos.On the one hand,it is well integrated with the teaching content.On the other hand,it can make students feel the beauty of language learning.(5)Teachers usually appear on the screen with medium-long shot,followed by medium-close shot and long shot.Generally speaking,medium-long shot is the best way to display the overall figures of teachers,including posture,gesture,facial expression,attire,etc.Meanwhile,the relationship between the knowledge points on PPT and teacher‘s body language is well represented.Teachers construct representational,interactive,and compositional meanings through the modality synergies of different multimodal resources.(1)Representational meaning in the micro-course videos is mainly realized through the conceptual process.Among them,the classificational process and the analytical process are more common while the symbolic process is less used.The modalities used to achieve representational meaning mainly include visual images,text,image & text.(2)Interactive meaning is more represented in the oral or audio-visual courses but less in the reading and writing courses.It is realized by deictic gesture,gaze,facial expressions and shot.(3)Compositional meaning is related to information value,salience and framing.Teachers mainly use the left-right information value and up-bottom information value.With respect to information value,teachers mainly utilize left-right pattern and up-bottom pattern while centre-margin pattern are relatively rare.Salience is a common way of composition in micro-courses,which is achieved by bold font,italic font,underline and color contrast.Framing is usually realized by frame diagrams,mind maps and text boxes in micro-courses.Among them,text boxes is a common way of composition while frame diagrams and mind maps is less used and mainly represented on the summary stage in some teachers‘ micro-courses.Based on the above research,this thesis provides some implications for the teaching of micro-course of foreign languages.Firstly,it is beneficial for teachers to use deictic gestures and beat sometimes to attract students‘ attention and emphasize the key points.Besides,rising-falling tone in micro-course is helpful to increase the rhythm of teachers‘ voice and improve the learning atmosphere.Secondly,teachers can have medium-long shot on lead-in and summary stages to enhance interaction and communication with students.Thirdly,symbolic process can be used to explain some abstract definitions or concepts in micro-courses.Thus,students will have a better understanding of them.What‘s more,teachers can realize interactive meaning by the appropriate use of gestures and facial expression.In regard to compositional meaning,frame diagrams and mind maps can be used in micro-courses,so that students can have a clearer understanding of the teaching content.