Interpersonal Meaning in Multimodal English Textbooks

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Exploring multimodality in English language teaching textbooks, this book focusses on how language and image are co-deployed within these resources in order to create and convey interpersonal meaning. Presenting cutting-edge research in appraisal studies and multimodal discourse analysis, Yumin Chen uses systemic functional linguistics and social semiotics to investigate how different voices are introduced and aligned inter-modally in textbooks, extending the appraisal systems of engagement and graduation across language and image. The book also demonstrates how linguistic and visual semiotic resources co-instantiate attitude, paying special attention to the attitudinal dimension of curriculum goals for school students of different ages. Furthermore, it examines how different kinds of coding orientation are deployed in various educational contexts and different constituent genres. Demonstrating how the linguistic and semiotic theories can be adapted to analyze multimodal texts across language and image, Interpersonal Meaning in Multimodal English Textbooks offers new perspectives on how to employ multimodal resources to enhance the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language.

Reviews

Chen offers an innovative linguistic and semiotic account of the interpersonal meaning arising from the pervasive multimodal features of EFL textbooks in China. A valuable contribution to the fields of discourse analysis and educational linguistics, this book theoretically adapts and extends appraisal analysis to multimodal discourse, and reveals the ways in which practitioners may better understand and interpret the multimodal resources in pedagogic materials. * Guowen Huang, Professor in the College of Foreign Studies, South China Agricultural University, China *
School textbooks do not just present seemingly immutable knowledge; they also convey attitudes, beliefs, and values. Chen shows how these voices are introduced in K-12 English textbooks in China through constant integration and cross contextualization of both verbal and visual resources. The book is an important resource for scholars and practitioners interested in language and literacy education. * Zhihui Fang, Professor of Education, University of Florida, USA *

Author Bio

Yumin Chen is Professor of Linguistics at Sun Yat-sen University, China.