关键词: 网络话语; 话语结构; 企业网站; 多模态语料库; 跨文化对比

Abstract:

Corporate websites are not only the crucial online communication medium for companies, they are also typical platforms for multimodal resources. In this cross-cultural study, which was inspired by the GeM model and cross-cultural theories, the multimodality of Chinese and US corporate websites were compared by adopting a corpus-based approach. The results show that both Chinese and US corporate websites are dominated by text-typographic and photo-pictorial elements, followed by diagram-representational and video-animated elements. However, the Chinese sites tend to employ more multimodal elements in total and more text-typographic and video-animated elements compared to the US sites. The Chinese sites featured more news and photos that are arranged in an atomized and compartmental format, while the US websites often use larger-sized pictures as backgrounds on which other elements are embedded in a more complex manner. In addition, the Chinese sites display more indicative elements with interactional functions to assist readers to navigate the sites and to build rapport with the audience. Finally, the Chinese sites use more QR codes and include more videos and flash videos, while the US sites display more social media icons. Conclusions about corporate multimodal discourse are drawn and implications for corporate web communications in a cross-cultural context are provided.

Keywords: online communication; discourse structure; corporate websites; multimodal corpus; cross-cultural study