Cross-cultural Communication of Ancient Chinese Astronomical and Calendar from the Perspective of Multimodal Cognitive Discourse Analysis

Abstract

Cultural soft power plays an increasingly crucial role in the international competition. Therefore, how to effectively spread 24 Solar Terms culture has become one of the main focuses for cultural scholars. The paper is based on the multimodal cognitive analysis, and it interprets the clip video Saying China Festival which enjoys a great popularity in overseas cultural communication. Various modalities including image, colour and sound reflect three levels of 24 Solar Terms culture: material, behavior and spirit levels, shaping the image of ancient Chinese culture through metaphor and metonymy. Relying on the results of the investigations, several practical suggestions of the cross-cultural communication are put forward: First, we ought to make use of the overlapped schemata to reduce the influence caused by the cultural differences, nonverbal modalities could be used frequently. Then, the stimulus of the overseas audience’s recognition of traditional Chinese cultural through emotional mechanisms is also a reasonable choice.