A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Posters-Based on Visual Grammar

Abstract

The 19th Asian Games was held in Hangzhou in September 2023, and the official posters for the 19th Asian Games Hangzhou 2022 are an important vehicle to display the cultural characteristics and concepts of China and Hangzhou. In this paper, Kress & Van Leeuwen’s visual grammar was the basis for the multimodal discourse analysis of the official posters for the 19th Asian Games Hangzhou 2022, and they interpreted how the different modal symbols in the official posters are interconnected with each other from the perspectives of representational meaning, interactive meaning and compositional meaning, which together construct the meaning of the image discourse and convey the information. Empirical evidence is presented for the practicability of visual grammar in analyzing posters, which aids viewers in comprehending them more thoroughly and has significant implications for enhancing the perception of modal discourse.