Convergence and Divergence in Branding City Destinations: A Comparative Study of the Multimodal Discourse in Beijing and London Publicity Films

Abstract

City branding brings immense benefits for mega-cities in gaining international prestige in an increasingly competitive global arena. City publicity films, as an effective method for promoting the city through online dissemination, can reach and influence a wider audience. However, the deployment of different semiotic resources in the branding discourse in city publicity films remains under-explored, and in particular, the role of cultural attributes in the construction of meaning in the discourse of city branding through linguistic and nonverbal modalities remains unknown. This paper, drawing on theories of Systemic Functional Grammar and Visual Grammar, examines the multimodal discourse of publicity films of Beijing and London in terms of representational and interactive meanings achieved through various semiotic resources. It is found that, in verbal and visual discourse, both films share similarities regarding enhancing persuasiveness via emotional branding but exhibit differences regarding how to achieve persuasiveness through different semiotic resources that co-construct meaning. The Beijing publicity film blends functional and emotional values while the London publicity film is prone to being more functional. In addition, possible reasons for the differences observed are discussed.