Abstract:
Guilin is endeavoring to build itself into a world-class tourism city. To make Guilin known to the world, it is crucial to expose Guilin to the global audience. One of the existing means of publicizing Guilin is through the reports on the English websites on Guilin tourism. This study explores how interpersonal meanings are constructed through the images and the texts of the reports on the websites.
Given that the website reports in question are image-text combined, this research uses a Multimodal Discourse Analysis approach to examine the text, applying Visual Grammar to the images, Appraisal Theory to the texts, and Logical-semantic Relations to both. This research, being mainly a qualitative study, also uses quantitative methods (e.g., corpus tools) to assist the data collection, annotation, and interpretation. To investigate how interpersonal meanings are constructed, this thesis aims to answer the following questions:
(1) What are the interpersonal meanings constructed through the images and texts in the English websites on the tourism of Guilin?
(2) How are the interpersonal meanings constructed via the images and texts?
The findings show that the main interpersonal meanings constructed are: hospitable invitation to Guilin, generous presentment of Guilin’s attractions, authoritative and distanced relationship establishment and maintenance with the website viewers. The construction methods of the interpersonal meanings are mainly amalgamations of offer, involvement, equality, viewer power, impersonal distance images, and texts that show positive valuation, complexity, impact, and quality. To construct the meanings together, relationships between the images and the text are mostly enhancement through reason/ purpose, elaboration through exemplification, and extension.
The results imply that the English websites on Guilin tourism could, perchance, adjust the use of the images and the texts to enhance its publicity effects. Besides providing reference to future website designers and promoters, this research could inspire readers in interpreting multimodal discourse.