Interpersonal Meaning in English Textbook Discourse A Multisemiotic Approach.doc

phd thesis proposal interpersonal meaning in english textbook discourse: a multisemiotic approach1 introduction we now live in a fast changing world, in which multiple modes of communication (e.g. verbal, visual, audio, spatial, gestural, etc.) enabled by the latest development of multimedia and computing technologies, often function simultaneously in printed matters, on computer screens and performance stages. accordingly peoples modes of thinking and ways of learning have experienced noteworthy changes, and the concept of multiliteracies has emerged and attracted scholarly attention. substantial studies have been carried out both from the perspective of multimediated literacy and in the dimension of cultural and linguistic diversity. to avoid too many foci, our present research concentrates on multiliteracies in the sense of multimediated literacy, and discusses the verbal texts and visual images in textbook discourse among many other multimodal teaching and learning resources. nowadays in china, most students in primary and secondary schools were born in the late 1980s or even 1990s. they are practically and extensively engaged with multisemiotic modes of communication both within and outside their classrooms, which has become a widelyvoiced concern among educationists (fu 2005). a pedagogy that enables multimediated literacy practices will at least complement, if not replace, the traditional language-based pedagogy. the issue of textbook editing has frequently been put on the agenda of the educational reform in china. however, given the numerous studies on curriculum design, textbook editing and teaching methodology, it is surprising that, to date, the multisemiotic nature of contemporary textbooks currently used in china has been relatively unexplored, which explains in part the necessity of the proposed research topic. the focus of the present study is on the interpersonal management in textbook discourse. we will ground our research in systemic functional linguistics (henceforth sfl), with the purpose of providing an integrated account of english textbook discourse across the strata of language system and social-cultural context. the data to be used in the present study is the whole series of english textbooks of the latest edition published by peoples education press (henceforth pep). taking an multisemiotic approach and from a multilevel perspective, we endeavour to understand how multiple strands of interpersonal meaning, which are realized by both linguistic and visual meaning-making resources, are incorporated into a harmonious and coherent multimodal english textbook discourse. 2 literature reviewin this section, we will focus on the linguistic and pedagogic landscape in which the present study is positioned, aiming at offering a better understanding of the current research topic and research background. first we will introduce the notion of multiliteracies, reviewing the major literature on this topic and the rapidly-developed research on multimodality. then a general account of the present-day scenario of the multimodality research and textbook editing in china mainland will be followed by a brief retrospect of the previous studies of interpersonal meaning from the systemic functional perspective. 2.1 toward an understanding of multiliteraciesthe term multiliteracies is proposed by the new london group1 (1996) to address the need for literacy pedagogy in response to the productively diverse working lives, pluralistic public lives, and multilayered personal lives in the new millennium. delineating the concepts of available designs (grammars of various semiotic systems and orders of discourse), designing (semiotic activity of production), and the redesigned (transformed meaning-making resources, a new available design), this pioneer and founding work on multiliteracies points out the significance of developing a metalanguage in functional terms to describe and explain various modes of meaning (linguistic, visual, audio, gestural, spatial and multimodal). in addition to introducing the what of multiliteracies pedagogy, the co-authors also identify four components that constitute the how of the pedagogy they propose: situated practice (utilizing available designs and students own experience), overt instruction (teaching in an explicit way the metalanguage for describing and interpretaing design elements), critical framing (exploring the social and cultural context of particular designs of meaning), and transformed practice (applying the redesigned to other contexts) (capitalization in the original) (new london group 1996, see also cope & kalantzis 2000). recognizing diversities and differences instead of advocating established cultural and linguistic forms, the concept of multiliteracies revolutionizes literacy pedagogy and the definition of being literate, and has attracted scholarly attention from various disciplines. when reviewing a further developmental stage of the pedagogy first espoused in multiliteracies, kalantzis & cope (2001: 9) point out the two related changes highlighted by multiliteracies research. one is the cultural and linguistic diversity and multiple englishes, and the other lies in the multimodal meaning-making resources (e.g. linguistic, visual, audio, gestural and spatial patterns of meaning) influenced by the new communications technologies. due to the focus of the present research, we will mainly concentrate our discussions on the studies of the second change. among numerous studies of multimediated literacy, two voices from the socio-cultural perspective can be identified. one derives from the approach called mediated discourse analysis, and the other develops out of the systemic functional semiotics tradition. 2.1.1 mediated discourse analysis approachthe principles of mediated discourse analysis were first proposed by scollon (1997, 1998) to approach the whole intersection of social practices of which discourse is a part (norris & jones 2005: 4). bringing together the advances in discourse analysis, psychology, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, it adopts nexus analysis as its methodological framework and takes mediated action as its basic unit of analysis. setting their sights on understanding and solving social problems, mediated discourse analysts have addressed such social issues as aids prevention, national identity, childhood literacy, gender issue and globalization. the efforts that have been made to explore the literacy practices include the studies carried out by boswood (2000), de saint georges and norris (1999), and scollon et al. (1999). mediated discourse analysis is more like a nexus of practice (scollon 2001) than a separate discipline or school. as is summed up by norris and jones (2005: 9), mediated discourse analysis approaches the question of how discourse is a matter of social action through the action rather than through the discourse. in other words, it expresses the concern with social action before discourse, and examines the role of discourse in action only after figuring out what the action is. 2.1.2 systemic functional semiotics traditioninformed by hallidays (1973, 1978, 1994/2000) systemic functional approach to language, sfl work on multiple semiotic modes of communication has developed rapidly over the past decade and still thriving in the new millennium. a quick survey of the literature demonstrates that the foundational and recent research on multimodality includes the studies of visual images (kress & van leeuwen 1996, 2001; otoole 1990, 1994), music and sound (van leeuwen 1999), action (martinec 1998, 2000), spatial design (martin & stenglin 2006), electronic media and film (baldry 2004, iedema 2001, thibault 2000, zammit & callow 2000), and architecture (otoole 2004). when reflecting on the action research that have been carried out by the sydney school2 ever since the early 1980s, martin (2000/2006) points out that the new millennium witnesses the fifth phase of the research in the context of education and workplace, which is characterized as multiliteracies. the sfl contributions to the study of the multimodal teaching and learning resources cover various semiotic modes of communication ranging from print and electronic media to classroom interaction, and from english literacy to other disciplines. for recent advances on this frontier see guos (2004) work on the multisemiotic features of biology textbooks, jewitts (2002) examination of the cd-rom used for school english, lemkes (1998, 2000, 2002) multimodal discourse analysis of scientific text and classroom practice, martin and roses (in press) investigation into the ideational meaning in technical images and relations between genres in science, ohallorans (1996, 2000, 2005) exploration of the multimodal mathematics texts and classroom discourse, royces (2002) research on the visual-verbal synergy in the tesol classroom, and unsworths (2001, 2005) multimodality studies of the text-image relationship in classroom practice and childrens e-literature literacy. 2.2 research background: multimodality research and textbook editing in chinathere is no lack of multimodal discourse studies in the chinese academic circle, although the number is still quite small. it is worth noticing that a few attempts have been made to discuss multimodal discourse by adopting sfl approach. li (2003) provides an introduction to the multimodal theory proposed by kress and leeuwen (1996) for analyzing visual images, mo (2006) carries out a multimodal analysis of advertising discourse, ye (2006) studies the multisemiotic nature of hypertext, and zeng (2006) explores the dynamic multimodal discourse for international academic exchange. textbook editing has always been a much-concerned topic in the educational reform in china. for instance, the textbooks for primary and secondary education have gone through the stages of unified compilation and revision and approval. the age of one syllabus, multiedition has begun by the end of the 1980s, and the common edition, coastal edition and inland edition have ever since coexisted (wang 2000). to date, however, few studies have addressed the issue of multiliteracies in china mainland from a linguistic perspective. we limit the scope of the present study by identifying three main gaps in the multiliteracies research. firstly, the understanding of the multisemiotic nature of the contemporary textbooks in china remains weak. secondly, given the numerous applications of the appraisal theory (martin 1997, 2000; martin & white 2005) to verbal texts, few, if any, attempts have been made to explore the appraisal system in images and its patterns of realization in educational context. thirdly, the literature to date suggests that the visual images in the textbooks currently used in china are far less investigated as compared to their western counterparts. 2.3 an overview of sfl work on interpersonal meaning within sfl, early studies on interpersonal meaning are carried out both on and beyond the level of lexico-grammar. halliday (1985/1989, 1994/2000) analyzes it at the level of lexico-grammar mainly as choices in the systems of mood and modality. berry (1981), martin (1992) and ventola (1987) study the discourse semantics of texts, addressing the issue of exchange structure and the structure of service encounter. beginning with poyntons (1985/1989) work on tenor, the research on evaluative meaning has aroused much interest since the 1980s. martin and rothery (1980, 1981), plum (1998) and rothery (1990) discuss evaluation across different stages of narrative. recent developments in sfl have prompted the research on interpersonal meaning at a discourse semantic level. inspired by the linguistic investigation of secondary school and workplace literacy since the early 1980s and building on the analysis of interpersonal meaning within this context (martin 1992, 1995, 1996), martin (1997) proposes a model to describe interpersonal semantics as the three systems of appraisal, involvement and negotiation. the appraisal theory has ever since been widely applied to the studies of science discourse (fuller 1998, veel 1998), history discourse (coffin 2000), administration discourse (iedema 2003), media discourse (iedema et al. 1994, white 2003), casual conversation (eggins & slade 1997), idioms (chang 2004), narrative (macken-horarik 2003), and literature (rothery & stenglin 2000). 3 theoretical frameworkthe present study will base the investigation of english textbook discourse on sfl (halliday 1973, 1978/2001, 1994/2000; halliday & matthiessen 2004) as a theoretical foundation, while taking into account the insights from the model for analyzing visual images informed by sfl (kress & van leeuwen 1996, 2001, 2002; martin 2001, 2004; van leeuwen & jewitt 2001; unsworth 2001). so far few studies have been done on the multimodal discourse in the educational context of china, and still few attempts have been made to examine english textbooks used in china by adopting the systemic functional approach. as eggins (2004: 21) points out, what is distinctive to systemic linguistics is that it seeks to develop both a theory about language as social process and an analytical methodology which permits the detailed and systematic description of language patterns (emphasis in the original). meaning is construed in the immediate context of situation and the wider context of culture (huang 2003, see also huang & ghadessy 2006). the functional-semantic orientation of sfl enables us to explore the discourse semantics of english textbook from two directions: downwardly we can carry out a detailed lexical-grammatical and visual analysis to provide solid evidence for our argument; upwardly the stratum of discourse semantics serves to be an interface with the social context in which textbook discourse is embedded. in sfl, interpersonal meaning is one of the three metafunctions that are simultaneously construed whenever language is used. it represent the speakers meaning potential as an intruder (halliday 1978/ 2001: 112), and is language in its “first and second person” guise (halliday & matthiessen 1999: 525). in other words, it involves speaking as doing in the construction of social relationships and is concerned with the interaction between language users. unlike the elemental structuring principle of experiential meaning and the periodic type of structure of textual meaning, interpersonal meaning is distributed like a prosody throughout a continuous stretch of discourse (halliday 1979/2002: 205-209; see also martin 1992: 10-11, 1997: 17). viewing interpersonal meaning across different strata of language, we find that interpersonal resources demonstrate themselves at the levels of lexio-grammar and phonology (halliday & matthiessen 1999: 527). martin explores interpersonal meaning at the level of discourse semantics and proposes a model for describing interpersonal semantics as three systems: appraisal (resources for construing emotion, judging behaviour and valuing objects) and involvement (resources for negotiating solidarity) complement the traditional focus on negotiation (mood-based resources for exchanging information or goods-&-services) (martin 1997: 18-20; see also martin 2000, martin & rose 2003, martin & white 2005, white 2003). the appraisal system includes three sub-systems of attitude, engagement and graduation, each of which has it own sub-categories or options. the study to be undertaken here will explore the linguistic and visual meaning-making resources by adopting the appraisal theory and intends to contribute further to the research by exploring its patterns of realization in visual communication. according to kress and van leeuwen (1996: 40-42), visual images, like all semiotic modes, have to fulfill the requirements for the representation of the experiential world, the communication between producers and receivers as well as the interaction between the participants represented in a visual design and its viewers, and the compositional arrangements of visual resources. adopting the theoretical hypothesis of metafunction in sfl, kress and van leeuwen (1996) discuss the corresponding metafunctional diversification in visual images under the headings of representational, interactive and compositional meanings. the categories subordinate to each of the meanings include choices available for visual sign-making. as our present research interest is in the interpersonal management in textbook discourse, we will focus mainly on the relationship between textbook editors and readers as well as the interaction among readers, and examine how these different strands of interpersonal meaning are realized in the verbal text and visual design of the textbooks under discussion. 4 aims and significance of the present study taking multisemiotic modes of communication into consideration, this study sets the long-term goal of establishing an integrated theoretical model that may be applied to the exploration of interpersonal management in the multimodal teaching and learning resources in the current educational context. the focus of the present research is to investigate in what ways the verbal and visual meaning-making resources are manipulated to enact the interpersonal relationships in the english textbooks currently used for primary education, junior and senior secondary education in china, and hopefully to contribute to the studies on interpersonal meaning by exploring the appraisal system in images. although textbook design and editing has long been a widely-concerned research topic among second/foreign language educationists, a detailed