Multimodal Construction Of The Pursuit Of Peace In Chinese Swordsmanship

At the award ceremony of the 7th China independent games festival,The Swords,a martial arts action game developed by Sunhead Games from Taiwan,China,won the best mobile game award.This game closely combines Chinese style with swordsmanship,which expresses the pursuit of peace in the discourse full of artistic conception.The present study aims to analyze how to use semiotic resources with Chinese characteristics to construct the cultural concept the pursuit of peace in traditional swordsmanship in games.The concept the pursuit of peace in this thesis refers to the swordsman's continuous pursuit of the unity of body and mind,the unity of man and sword,and the harmony between man and nature(harmony between the swordsman and the surrounding environment)in the making of a true swordsman.Based on systemic functional grammar,kinetic typography and visual grammar,the thesis proposes a comprehensive framework suitable for the research of multimodal resources in the mobile game The Swords,which will facilitate an in-depth discourse analysis of The Swords and the discussion of the multimodal construction of the concept the pursuit of peace in the game.Through the analysis,it is found that: 1.In The Swords,semiotic resources including language system(which includes Chinese characters in poetic lines and narrative texts with style of Chinese prose),the kinetic typography of Chinese characters and Chinese ink painting are mainly deployed to convey the concept the pursuit of peace in Chinese swordsmanship to the player.2.Specifically,declarative sentences,imperative mood and repetition structures are frequently used in Chinese characters in poetic lines and narrative texts with style of Chinese prose to realize interpersonal function,which not only provides the game background information to the player,but also emphasizes the pursuit of peace in Chinese swordsmanship.In the kinetic typography of Chinese characters,the player's manipulation of the shape of strokes and the writing speed in his act of writing Chinese characters with his sword interactively guides him to achieve the balance between his posture and mind,and eventually to achieve the state of inner peace in his mind,as an analogy of the unity of man and sword in the making of a swordsman.In Chinese ink painting,the integrated use of modality resources including color modulation,contextualization and representation symbolically constructs the player's continuous perception of the harmonious interaction between himself and his enemies,his sword as well as his surroundings on his way to the making of a true swordsman.3.The verbal and visual resources in the game discourse,both of which interactively emphasize the pursuit of peace,demonstrate a complementary relationship.This study shows that a multimodal discourse analysis can be applied to the discourse analysis of the mobile game about swordsmanship featuring Chinese style,which provides a new perspective for game evaluation and is conducive to the development of game works with Chinese cultural characteristics.