A Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis of English Micro-lectures

Abstract

Lim (2019) states that one challenge for the researchers in multimodal discourse analysis is to describe and discuss the interplay across various semiotic resources. English micro-lectures, as a kind of popular and widespread teaching materials in the information age, are typical multimodal discourses involving multi-semiotic resources. This article adopts the systemic-functional synthetic framework for multimodal discourse analysis from Zhang Delu (2018) to explore the relationship of various modes involved in excellent English micro-lectures and further examine how the semiotic resources cooperate and interact to construct communicative meaning. By analyzing and interpreting the context of culture, the meaning, the lexico-grammar, the media and the substance systems of involved modes in micro-lectures, it proves that English micro-lectures demonstrate complicated intersemiosis and various modes cooperate in a perfect way in meaning construction. This comprehensive investigation of semiotic systems sheds light on teachers’ mode choice and teaching design in producing micro-lectures and students’ learning strategies of micro-lectures in the mobile-assisted learning environment.