Abstract:

Market forces have increasingly influenced higher education throughout the world over the past decades. In this global context, universities are confronted with considerable challenges and intense competition, with Hong Kong being no exception. In order to promote their image and enhance their competitiveness, universities in Hong Kong have adopted various branding strategies, particularly on social media platforms. The present study conducts a social semiotic analysis of the identity construction of Hong Kong universities on social media within the framework of Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) visual grammar. The data of this study consist of 356 visual images collected from official accounts of eight universities in Hong Kong. The findings show that universities in Hong Kong tend to construct their identities as student-centered, research-oriented, innovative, internationalized, and society-oriented institutions on social media, which reflects the process of educational marketization and cultural hybridity in Hong Kong society and culture.

Keywords: social media; university discourse; identity construction; visual grammar; marketization; multimodal discourse analysis

摘要：

在教育的市场化进程中，世界各个国家和地区的大学都面临着激烈的竞争和巨大的挑战，香港也不例外。为了进一步提升国际竞争力，香港高校采取了各种宣传策略，尤其重视社交媒体等新媒体平台的作用。本文采用视觉语法分析框架，以香港8所公立大学发布在社交媒体平台上的356张图片为研究对象，考察了社交媒体中香港高校话语的身份建构问题。研究结果表明，香港高校在社交媒体中通过视觉图像建构了以生为本、研究型、创新型、国际化、社会导向型的高等教育机构身份，反映了香港高等教育市场化和香港社会所特有的文化杂糅性特征。

关键词: 社交媒体, 高校话语, 身份建构, 视觉语法, 教育市场化, 多模态话语分析