Chinese culture in globalization : a multimodal case study on visual discourse

Abstract

This thesis is an interdisciplinary, multimodal and semiological case study of the role of the visual in the discourse of Chinese culture within the area of culture and language studies. It arises from a desire to have a better understanding of the central question: how does the global flow of visual culture and English language influence both the visual and the verbal representations in the discourse of Chinese culture in the process of globalization? Central to this major question are the motions of ‘discourse’ and ‘culture’. The present research is based on the premise that by regarding culture as the discursive ‘Text’, it is both effective and constructive in understanding semiotic representations of cultural discourse.

By synthesizing relevant theories of discourse, semiotics, multimodality and case study approach, the thesis conceptualizes its image-based multimodal semiological case study approach. With such a research approach, the thesis carries out pragmatic and social semiotic studies of Ningbo City of China as an instrumental case. It focuses on the transformations of semiotic representations in the cityscape and language use in the public places of the city in the process of globalization.

The thesis is based on the single case study and triangulation of the case findings. It concludes that under the influence of global flow of visual culture and English language, in the discourse of Chinese culture today new forms of semiotic representations, both visual and verbal, are generated and transformed by ‘the law of transformation’ in the new dialogical space, and synchronized by ‘the law of wholeness’ and ‘the law of self-regulation’ (Hawkes, 1982/1977:16), made socio-ideologically meaningful such as the re-culturalized use of English and artefacts of ‘foreign’ origin constitute and communicate the transformed ideology and ‘glocal’ identity in the new discourse of Chinese culture in the current phase of globalization of the local and localization of the global.

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