Representation Meaning of Multimodal Discourse—A Case Study of English Editorials in The Economist

Abstract

Resources such as images, colors, sounds and actions have already been regarded as different types of modes which fulfill the meaning-making. Multimodal discourse refers to two or more modes working together for the meaning-making of the whole discourse. With Kress& van Leeuwen's Visual Grammar as the theoretical framework and based on Royce's inter-semiotic complementarity theory, the paper conducts a multimodal discourse analysis of English editorials in the Economist from ideational aspects. The study of ideational aspect focuses on factors such as participants, processes (action, reactional, etc.), circumstance, etc. The analysis reveals the pictures' functions in meaning interpretation and explains the relations between the pictures and the verbal texts. English editorial discourses usually possess multimodal characteristics displayed by two semiotic modes (visual mode and verbal mode). English editorials give almost equal weight to both their pictures and verbal texts. Since English editorials are mainly to explain, to judge and to comment on hot issues, both their pictures and verbal texts coexist and integrate with each other to accomplish these tasks. Therefore, pictures, as an important component of English editorials, also can encourage and help readers to actively and effectively understand editorials' main ideas and attitudes.