1。2 Research Purposes

The thesis has the following purposes。 Firstly, it is to explore multimodality and contribute to the MDA because there are still few researches in this field at home。 Secondly, it is to concentrate on the meanings construed by the paralanguage and non-verbal semiotic resources in public speeches, as well as to reveal how these semiotic resources affect the popularity of a TED speech。

The thesis designs four research questions: 

1) How are these meanings constructed by the verbal modality in public speech? 

2) How are these meanings constructed by the non-verbal modality in public speech? 

3) How do these semiotic resources co-embody the integrative meaning of public speech so that it can achieve a better effect?

1。3 Significance of this Study 

The significance of this study is manifested in two aspects: theoretically, it testifies the applicability and   feasibility of multimodal discourse analysis theories in interpreting the public speech。 In addition, it provides a new perspective for better understanding multimodal public speeches and extends the application field of   multimodal discourse analysis; practically, it can help speakers use the social semiotic functions of the verbal and paralanguage recourses more scientifically to achieve the goal of giving a successful speech。

1。4 Data Collection and Analysis

The author takes the 13-minutes TED speech “What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness” by the psychiatrist Robert Waldinger as a study case。 This speech whose total hits have been up to 8,039,313 is the most popular TED speech given on 24, November 2015。 In this speech, Mr。 Waldinger shared three important lessons learned from the study as well as some practical, old-as-the-hills wisdom on how to build a fulfilling, long life。 As a perfect research case, this speech tries to analyze certain items like image, pitch, posture, facial expressions etc。 in speech to explore the idea transmission from a perceptive of multimodal analysis。 The methodology adopted in this thesis is qualitative method, i。e。 analyzing those items in detail to seek empirical support for drawing a conclusion。

II。 Literature Review

2。1 Previous Studies of MDA 

In the last decade, multimodality is widely used by semioticians and linguists in social semiotic fields both abroad and at home。 In order to better understand MDA, first of all, here is a n explanation of the word “multimodality”。 Seeing it from the literal perspective, the word consists of two parts: they are prefix “multi-” and word “modality”。 “Multi-” whose opposite prefix is “mono-” that means “alone, sole, and single” is a prefix which means “many or much”。 As for “modality”, it suggests a kind of semiotic resources。 That is, multimodality refers to the interaction process or interaction product of different semiotic resources。 Though multimodalities have been widely used in loads of discourses, and it has become a more popular topic in the semiotic fields, till now, its definition is still not given by those scholars and linguists yet。 And next paragraphs will briefly introduce the previous studies abroad and at home。 First is its definition。 Since multimodality is firstly put forward in west, its description abroad is illustrated as follows。论文网

Kress (2000) defines multimodality as “the idea that communication and representation always draw on a multiplicity of semiotic modes of which language may be one”。 And van Leeuwen (2005) states that multimodality is “the combination of different semiotic modes in a communicative artifact or event”。 While according to Baldry and Thibault (2006: 24), multimodality means “the perse ways in which a number of distinct semiotic systems are both code deployed and contextualized in the making of a text-specific meaning”。 Additionally, they consider multimodality as describing the grammar of visual communication used by image designers。 It illustrates the principles and rules that allows readers to comprehend the potential meaning of relative position of elements, salience, framing, proximity, styles of typeface, color saturations, etc。