Multimodal Chinese Discourse: Understanding Communication and Society in Contemporary China

Dezheng (William) Feng’s Multimodal Chinese Discourse is a thought-provoking addition to the Routledge Studies in Multimodality series. The book examines a diverse range of contemporary Chinese discourse across various genres, including publicity posters, promotional films, e-commerce websites, reality dating shows, TikTok, and livestreaming videos. Feng explores concepts such as nation branding, hegemonic masculinity, variegated neoliberalization, and discursive governance, providing a locally grounded perspective on discursive practices and social changes in China.

An introductory chapter outlines three main objectives: investigating new features of discourse and communication in different domains of society, providing analytical tools for systematic analysis of multimodal meaning-making, and generating new understandings of social changes through a locally grounded perspective. Chapter 2 presents the theoretical foundation and analytical framework, relating the discursive features of contemporary China to its sociocultural context through a social semiotic approach to multimodal discourse analysis.

The next six chapters explore different aspects of multimodal Chinese discourse followed by a concluding chapter. The chapters draw on theoretical frameworks such as visual social semiotics, appraisal theory, multimodal metaphor analysis, register typology, and genre analysis.

Chapters 3 and 4 focus on multimodal discourse at the national level. Chapter 3 applies a social semiotic model of multimodal metaphor analysis to publicity posters about pursuing the “Chinese Dream”, the Chinese Communist Party, and the Chinese people. Chapter 4 analyses a film promoting China’s national image, examining evaluative meanings in various sections including eight episodes, a prelude and an epilogue.

The following two chapters explore branding in e-commerce and marketization at the institutional level. Chapter 5 examines the branding discourse of women’s clothes on the Taobao online shopping platform, focusing on expert and peer identity in micro-genres such as clothing, fashion and lifestyle discourse. Chapter 6 analyses Peking University’s TikTok videos from a social semiotic perspective, discussing how the university rebrands itself through different types of videos. These include reporting-oriented videos, in which the primary focus is on reporting activities, events, or news related to the university; sharing-oriented videos, in which the main activity is sharing experiences, insights, or perspectives from the university community; and expounding-oriented videos, in which professional knowledge is expounded upon by scholars from Peking University and other leading scholars from China and abroad. These types of videos help the university to achieve promotional, relational, entertainment, and educational goals, thereby effectively rebranding itself.

The next two chapters delve into gender identity in the Chinese entertainment industry at the individual level. Chapter 7 examines masculinity as portrayed in the male guests’ self-introduction videos on the reality dating show Fei Cheng Wu Rao (If You Are the One), focusing on inner qualities such as personality, virtue, capabilities, and socioeconomic status. Chapter 8 analyses a wanghong (internet celebrity) girl’s performance of femininity in livestreaming, discussing how her performance intertwines traditional attributes such as filial piety, purity, inferiority, and patriotism with modern attributes including individualism, career-orientedness, physical attractiveness, and cheerfulness. The concluding chapter suggests future directions for multimodal Chinese discourse studies.

The case studies provide meticulous and in-depth analyses of various forms of Chinese discourse. The chapters on publicity posters and promotional films offer valuable insights into the use of metaphors and evaluative meanings in constructing the “Chinese Dream” and China’s national image. The exploration of branding discourse in e-commerce and marketization sheds light on the role of expert and peer identity in shaping consumer behaviour. Additionally, the analysis of TikTok videos and a reality dating show provides a fascinating examination of how institutions and individuals use multimodal discourse to shape their image and identity.

Feng’s book adopts a Chinese perspective on interpreting multimodal discourse, similar to Shi-xu’s (2014) de-Westernized or localized approach to contemporary Chinese discourse. This similarity lies in the shared goal of offering alternative insights to scholars from non-Western and Global South countries. However, Feng’s approach diverges from Shi-xu’s in its focus on social semiotics, exploring various patterns of meaning-making in multimodal Chinese discourse, while Shi-xu’s cultural approach mainly focuses on monomodal verbal texts. Feng’s unique adjustments and adaptations to Western analytical frameworks, such as visual social semiotics (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006) and appraisal theory (Martin and White 2005), are particularly noteworthy. These adjustments, tailored to fit the Chinese context, are original and may be beneficial to the theoretical development of Chinese discourse analysis. They represent a significant step towards integrating Western theories with local contexts, thereby enriching the field with diverse perspectives. Although focused on communication and society in contemporary China, Feng’s book sheds light on issues relevant to international readers. Another positive contribution in relation to methodology is the author’s hybridization of several analytical frameworks throughout the book, resulting in nuanced discussions of concepts such as genre, identity, register, modern/traditional attributes.

However, the book’s reliance on Western analytical frameworks may limit its applicability to other cultural contexts. While Feng acknowledges this limitation and makes adjustments to fit the Chinese context, a more comprehensive discussion of the challenges and implications of using Western frameworks in non-Western contexts would have been beneficial. Additionally, the book could have further explored the intersectionality of gender and other social categories in Chinese discourse, as this would have provided a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of identity construction in contemporary China.

Overall, Multimodal Chinese Discourse is a valuable contribution to the field, offering a comprehensive and engaging exploration of Chinese discourse across various genres and providing valuable insights into the discursive practices and social changes in contemporary China. Its unique combination of a Chinese perspective with Western frameworks offers a nuanced understanding of multimodal meaning-making in the Chinese context.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education Humanities and Social Sciences Research Youth Fund Project [22YJC740059] and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Provincial Universities of Zhejiang [GK219909299001-224].