From the above, the author has made an analysis of the multimodal discourse of automobile advertisements through the visual grammar established by Kress and Van Leeuwen. In this thesis, with the introduction of purpose and significance in this field and some basic concepts, and through the analysis of automobile advertisement, some major findings could be concluded as follows.
Firstly, the various kinds of modes in the advertisement are not simply added to each other but integrated and blended to produce a coherent discourse. Secondly, from the perspective of
representational meaning, the author finds that the verbal content anchors the meaning of the image and supports the visual by providing the context of interpretation. The visual metaphor is used here to indicate the relations between the text and the image. Thirdly, from the perspective of interpersonal meaning, both the image and the text have an interactive meaning. The interactive meaning of the image is mainly realized through distance and view angle which complements the modality makers like light and color. Fourthly, from the perspective of compositional meaning, the author finds that the verbal the visual complement each other through the analysis of information value, salience and framing.
