Date of Award

6-2010

Thesis Type

PhD

Document Type

Thesis

Divisions

Faculty of Languages and Linguistics

Department

Department of English Language

Institution

Universiti Malaya

Abstract

The study is a multimodal analysis of Malaysian business-to-business brochures (b2b) that advertise training programmes for human resource development in local and multinational companies. The multimodal analysis is within the framework of systemic functional theory as the theory has resources to analyse verbal as well as visual elements in texts. The aims of the study are to identify the verbal and visual components that make up the genre, ascertain how the functions of the business brochures are realized in the components and establish how these various semiotic components cohere such that the brochures are seen as a unified whole.  The data of the study comprises sixty-three Malaysian business-to-business brochures as well as interviews with the discourse community of the genre to elicit their views on the functions of the business brochures. The brochures were analysed to identify the components that form the generic structure potential (GSP) of the b2b brochures and to obtain information about the layout and images that are prevalent in the brochures. The brochures were also used to establish whether cohesion in texts can be achieved based on visual compositional resources. The study identified five obligatory super clusters or components namely the title, signature, programme information, credibility and response solicitation and four optional super clusters which are the value, justifier, attention-getter and incentive super clusters in the GSP of Malaysian business brochures. A system network that outlines all the possible realizations of the genre was also established. A comparison with the GSPs of other print advertisements reveals that credibility, value and response solicitation are the three defining components of the business brochures not found in other print advertisements and unlike other kinds of advertisements, visual images are optional in the business brochures. The study also revealed that the functions of the business brochures are reflected in the verbal and visual components of the brochures and that the placement of the components in the layout of the brochures corresponds to the stages in the hierarchy of effects model (Lavidge and Steiner, 1961) of advertising. Furthermore, this study provides evidence that the information value theory (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996, 2006) is applicable to most sections in the layout of the brochures. Lastly, the study proposes an analytical framework based on visual compositional resources (VCR) for analysing cohesion in multimodal texts such that it can complement the lexical and logico-semantic resources usually adopted in cohesion studies. This study would contribute towards knowledge about business brochures and would be a useful reference for text designers producing brochures for the local and the foreign business markets as the functions of these brochures are found to be rather universal. In addition, the findings would also provide the information required to develop teaching materials for media and semiotics studies as well as for writing courses in the context of language for specific purposes.

Initial

khm

Additional Information

Thesis (PhD) – Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, Universiti Malaya, 2010.

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