Across the islands: A multimodal discourse analysis of government homepages

Abstract

This article examines the homepages of two island governments: American Hawaii and Chinese Hainan. Under Pauwels' (2012) multimodal framework for analysing websites as cultural expressions, we investigate how the homepages construct identities and multimodally portray the islands as tourist destinations. Through attractive imagery, interpersonal linguistic choices, and interactive links to social media, Hawaii’s homepage depicts the state’s identity as a modern, welcoming indigenous community. Hainan’s website has a Chinese version and an English version. With a newspaper type of official and formal presentation, the Chinese homepage promotes the provincial government’s identity as a traditional administration and information hub by extensively using impersonal semiotic resources with limited interactivity. In contrast, the English homepage creates an identity as a thoughtful caretaker and attentive administrator who provides practical resources to meet the needs of foreign guests. In terms of semiotic use and visual design, Hainan’s English homepage seems to position itself between two extremes: Hainan’s Chinese homepage and the Hawaii homepage. The homepage differences can be explained from the standpoint of communication purposes and cultural values. Although all three belong to a pragmatic discourse type, these homepages situate themselves at different points on a continuum. This paper highlights the importance of researching the relationship between cultural specificity and webpage design.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We’d like to express our deep gratitude to Professor Philippe Humblé, the editors and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions and comments.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

SUPPLEMENTAL DATA

Supplemental data (Figures 10–13) for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2022.2062443.

SOURCES

Hawaii.gov | The Official Website of the Aloha State (ehawaii.gov)

海南省人民政府网 (hainan.gov.cn)

People's Government of Hainan Province (http://en.hainan.gov.cn/englishgov/)

Official Guide to Government Information and Services | USAGov (https://www.usa.gov/)

中国政府网_中央人民政府门户网站 (www.gov.cn)

Notes

1 The description of Wenchang chicken (Figure 3), for instance, contains an ungrammatical sentence, ‘ … while fillets of Wenchang chicken is most renowned serving method.’

2 ‘Flowers split’ (a mistranslation) actually means ‘flowers bloom’ (Figure 3). It might be difficult for westerners to understand the symbolic meaning intended here because ‘welcome the anniversary’ sounds awkward in English. This is an example of literal translation, rather than cultural translation, showing that the discourse is not ‘ecological’ (Liu, Lyu, and Zheng 2021).

3 According to Cialdini (2007), the technique of authority is to use the photos or words of celebrities; the social proof is to provide evidence of what others do and how they do it, which can serve as proof that it is worth imitating, and hence influence users to repeat the same actions. Hainan’s English homepage includes news titles as social proof, like ‘Sanya sees increase in tourist numbers for upcoming … ’ (with ‘an’ carelessly missing here).

4 We observed the homepages in August and September of 2021 only to find that the overall style of each homepage had changed little, but all had less linguistic information and became less cluttered, perhaps to suit the needs of smartphone users (Figures 11–13). More visual modifications might have been made to the Hawaiian homepage because it often tends to change the main background picture. Additionally, its new homepage features Governor David Ige and Latest News, making it more like Hainan’s homepages. Another exciting fact is that, in September 2018, the Hawaiian homepage (Figure 1) was much shorter than the Hainan homepages (Figures 2 and 3), but later it became longer (Figure 11). Further research should be done into what these changes mean.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Philosophy and Social Science Fund of the 13th Five-year Plan of Guangzhou City of China: [Grant Number 2019GZGJ24]; the Fund of Key Research Projects of Humanities and Social Sciences in Colleges and Universities of Guangdong Province: [Grant Number 2018WZDXM010]; the Double First-Class Construction Project of South China University of Technology: [Grant Number K5200690]; Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China: [Grant Number ZDPY202036]; Philosophy and Social Science Fund of the 13th Five-year Plan of Guangdong Province of China: [Grant Number GD18XWW14].

Notes on contributors

Xiqin Liu

Xiqin Liu is a professor in linguistics in the School of Foreign Languages and Research Centre for Indian Ocean Island Countries, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China. Her research interests cover visual sociology, multimodal discourse studies, cultural studies, and lexicography. She spent the 2017–2018 academic year as a visiting colleague at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, working with Dongping Zheng.

Dongping Zheng

Dongping Zheng is an associate professor in the Department of Second Language Studies, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. She is affiliated with the Centre for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, China; Her research cuts across fields of learning technologies, multimodal discourse analysis, second language learning, design-based research, and ecolinguistics. Email: [email protected]

Shuozi Wu

Shuozi Wu is an MA student in linguistics in the School of Foreign Languages at South China University of Technology, supervised by Xiqin Liu.