This book meets the demands of scholars of Chinese linguistics as well as researchers on multimodality from a cross-linguistic and comparative perspective. It sheds new light on the traditional study of Chinese discourse and grammar. The volume brings together leading scholars working on the state-of-the-art research on this topic from all over the world, contributing to the understanding of the multimodal nature of human interaction at large.

Classic pragmatic theories emphasize the linguistic aspect of illocutionary acts and forces. However, as multimodality has gained importance and popularity, multimodal pragmatics has quickly become a frontier of pragmatic studies. This book adds to this new research trend by offering a perspective of situated discourse in the Chinese context. Using the multimodal corpus approach, this study examines how speakers use multiple devices to perform illocutionary acts and express illocutionary forces. Not only does the author use qualitative analysis to study the types, characteristics, and emergence patterns of illocutionary forces, he also performs a quantitative, corpus-based analysis of the interaction of illocutionary forces, emotions, prosody, and gestures. The results show that illocutionary forces are multimodal in nature while meaning in discourse is created through an interplay of an array of modalities. Students and scholars of pragmatics, corpus linguistics, and Chinese linguistics will benefit from this title.

One major feature of conversation is that people take turns to speak. Based on audio and video recordings of naturally-occurring Mandarin conversation, this book explores the role of syntax, prosody, body movements as well as their interplay in turn organization in the temporal unfolding of action and interaction. Adopting the methodology of interactional linguistics, this book offers a fine-grained analysis of the three multimodal resources and the sequential environments in which they appear. It demonstrates that syntax, prosody and body movements not only converge but also diverge in projecting possible turn completion. As one of the few systematic studies of multimodality in Mandarin interaction, this book will be of interest to researchers in Chinese linguistics, interactional linguistics, conversation analysis, and multimodal analysis.

“Celebrations and traditions might differ, but the story of missing distant family is universal.” — School Library Journal (starred review) This poignant, vibrantly illustrated tale, which won the prestigious Feng Zikai Chinese Children’s Picture Book Award in 2009, is sure to resonate with every child who misses relatives when they are away — and shows how a family’s love is strong enough to endure over time and distance.

"This book provides concepts, methodologies, and applications used to design and develop multimodal systems"--Provided by publisher.

Xuehua Xiang examines multimodal interaction in the marketplace in a multilingual town at the juncture of urbanization in Southern China. Using a collection of data that span nearly 20 years from ethnographic fieldwork, Language, Multimodal Interaction and Transaction: Studies of a Southern Chinese marketplace analyzes multimodal talk-in-interaction in the traditional marketplace as both an economic mechanism and a localized social space. Focusing on how buyers and sellers interact to complete transactions as marketplace shifts from sedimentations of road-side peddling to centralized built space and further to corporate e-commerce, Xiang takes into account the Janus nature of language as both incurring transaction costs and a powerful tool of information and control. By analyzing the socializing functions of language in the marketplace outside of and beyond economic dealings, the study additionally documents and depicts the roles of affect and morality in marketplace encounters. The study offers an overarching framework for future research on the mediating role of language and multimodal interaction in economic activities as well as on the interplay of information, knowledge, affect and morality in social encounters.

A practical guide to understanding and investigating the multiple modes of communication, verbal and non-verbal. Sets out clear methodology to help readers conduct their own analysis and includes many real examples.

Nowadays, discourse analysis deals with not only texts but also paratexts and images; so do translation and interpreting studies. Therefore, the concept of multimodality has become an increasingly important topic in the subject areas of linguistics, discourse analysis and translation studies. However, up to now not much research has been done systematically on multimodal factors in translation and interpreting, and even less in exploring research models or methodologies for multimodal analysis in translation and interpreting. This book aims to introduce and apply different theories of the multimodal discourse analysis to the study of translations, with case studies on Chinese classics such as the Monkey King, Mulan and The Art of War, as well as on interpretations of up-to-date issues including the Chinese Belt and Road Initiatives and Macao tourism. The chapters reflect the first attempts to apply multimodal approaches to translation and interpreting with a special focus on Chinese-English translations and interpreting. They provide new understandings of transformations in the multimodal translation process and useful reference models for researchers who are interested in doing research of a similar kind, especially for those who are interested in looking into translations related to Chinese language, literature and culture.

The first in-depth study to integrate the study of legal language with analysis of multimodal communication.

Focusing on multimodality in translation studies, this edited volume provides insights into the trends and practices of multimodal translation in a variety of media. Divided into four main themes, the book explores audiovisual translation in digital media, multimodal translation of Chinese classics, multimodal design in website translation, and the use of paratexts in conference interpreting. Contributors draw on a diverse range of methods and theoretical models, including systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis, narrative theory, Skopos-functional theory, multimodal analysis of digital discourse, and corpus-based multimodal analysis. It covers important topics in media translation, ranging from emerging multimodal translation models to multimodal creativity in interlingual subtitling for social media and identity construction in the multimodal translation of food advertising. Through robust empirical studies, the book aims to shed light on the methodological development of multimodal translation in different media forms, including social media, websites, on-site interactions and books. The title will be of great value to scholars and students of linguistics, translation studies, multimodal discourse analysis and digital media.